Apache Woven Wedding Basket. Produced c. 1930s. 

Condition: Damage to top edge. 

Size: 14 3 /4 x 14 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. 

#3591 . 

Native Americans traditionally make their baskets from the materials available locally, with a wide variety of techniques. Arctic and Subarctic tribes use sea grasses for basketry. At the dawn of the 20th Century, Inupiaq men began weaving baskets from baleen, a substance derived from whale jaws, and incorporating walrus ivory and whale bone in basketry. In New England, traditional baskets are woven from Swamp Ash. The wood is peeled off a felled log in strips, following the growth rings of the tree. In Maine and the Great Lakes regions, traditional baskets are woven from black ash splints. Pack baskets from the Adirondack region have traditionally been woven from black ash or willow. Baskets can also be woven from sweet grass, as is traditionally done by Canadian indigenous peoples. Birchbark is used by a wide range of peoples from the Dene to Ojibwa to Mi’kmaq, and these baskets are often embellished with dyed porcupine quills. Some of the more notable styles are the large, bulky Nantucket Baskets and the distinctively bow-shaped Williamsburg Baskets. Southeastern peoples, such as the Atakapa, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chitimacha, traditionally use split river cane for basketry. A particularly difficult technique for which these peoples are known is double-weave or double-wall basketry, in which each basket is formed by an interior and exterior wall seamlessly woven together. Northwestern peoples use spruce root, cedar bark, and swampgrass. Ceremonial basketry hats are particularly valued by Northwest peoples and are worn today at potlatches. Traditionally, women wove basketry hats, and men painted designs on them. Indigenous peoples of California and Great Basin are known for their basketry skills. Coiled baskets are particularly common, woven from sumac, yucca, willow, and basket rush, and include the Pomo people’s famous coiled dowry or “puberty basket” (kol-chu or ti-ri-bu-ku), though those began to vanish after the late 19th Century. Apache women wove yucca, willow leaves, or juniper bark into baskets that could hold heavy loads, and also created intricately designed bowls and jars with the same patterns and an extremely tight weave and augmentations with clay or other substances. In northwestern Mexico the Seri people continue to “sew” baskets using splints of the limberbush plant, Jatropha cuneata, and the numerous weaving styles of the Oaxaca region in Mexico have made a significant comeback from the late 20th Century onward.

Damage to top edge.