Cheese making basket. Used for straining the whey when making fresh cheese. The basket graduates very slightly, so the opening is larger than the base. It has a plaited rim with loose fibres beneath.
In the making of many kinds of cheese, the separation of whey from the curd continues outside of the vat, even as the cheese is given its form (the root of romance language words for cheese such as the French fromage and the Italian formaggio). Here, we see a simple basket, collected in Cyprus in 1990 by a Horniman Museum curator, in which a soft moist curd—likely made from ewes’ or goats’ milk—would have been deposited to drain. The outer edges of cheese drained in this basket would have taken on its texture, giving a pleasing aesthetic.
