As the first foreigner to be formally trained as an authentic Nantucket basket artist, Etsuko Yashiro shares her inspirational journey full of setbacks, how she turned her dream of empowering women through this craft into a reality with dedication, and her firm commitment to creating the eco-system to preserve, evolve, and pass down the authentic Nantucket basket culture to the next generation.

Etsuko Yashiro was born in Japan and currently resides in Concord, Massachusetts. In 1994, She began making Nantucket baskets and studied under Alan Reed. She established a basket-making studio called GrayMist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and expanded her studio to the Imperial Hotel in Japan. To help preserve the Nantucket basket-making tradition, she created a school in Japan to teach the craft and has trained approximately 80 instructors in Japan.