RetroShopper

http://gizmodo.com/5231252/bike-handleb ... +in-basket

Add ribbons and glitter to taste.

What a terrible idea!
1. Take a basket with a huge area, designed to carry a lot of weight.
2. Mount it at the highest point of the bike.

Then you hit a bump and the whole thing pivots forwards in the stem!

Apart from those minor issues it's genius :?

but chris butchers bikes have been like that for many years

Butchers bikes have always had the basket closer to the front wheel and some kind of support underneath the basket. This is a picture of a modern Pashley mailstar:
http://www.pashley.co.uk/products/mailstar.html

Note the positioning of the basket under the handlebars, the support underneath it, and how the front wheel is smaller than the back to keep the weight lower.

For touring, I think a front rack that isn't a lowrider is an excellent idea. I hate lowriders, they're always catching on things and rubbish for light, bulky stuff like tents and sleeping bags.

When funds allow, I want to make a porteur type rack for my touring bike. No-one makes anything like what I want anymore. But the weight must be as low as possible, and the bike needs a very relaxed head tube angle and a fork with lots of rake so the load is stable. Retro bikes only, I'm afraid.

are lowriders the ones that are like panniers for the front ? never liked those , bike must handle like shit with those

ive seen some lovely custom stuff , most uses the canti mounts

if i ever had to carry stuff anywhere more often than a couple times id knock together a long bike or an xtracycle , lets face it all the bolt on stuff looks a bit gash

Yeah, lowriders were invented by Jim Blackburn, and the beginnings of Blackburn. They are the most stable way of carrying two useless, tiny bags that ground out if you ride in a tiny rut. Never got on with mine.
The porteur tradition from France just before the second world war produced some really nice looking bikes and a mad races with porteur bikes fully loaded with newspapers.
This is a page about porteur racing - mad pictures!

http://www.blackbirdsf.org/courierracin ... x1935.html

With modern bikes It's sort of captured in this:

http://bikesfortherestofus.blogspot.com ... ll-pr.html

My next tourer build will have some similar features to this, but a lot of the details will be different.
Watch this space!

from my collection

That bottom one is very interesting. Do you know what it belongs to?

afraid not , itl likely have come from one of the various handmade bike shows there was a few months ago

you could of course copy the design and braze together some tubing