Basket-weaving

traditions

Basket-weaving

• Basket-weaving is one of the oldest known Native American crafts--there are ancient Indian baskets from the Southwest that have been identified by archaeologists as nearly 8000 years old.

• As with most Native American art, there were originally multiple distinct basketry traditions in North America. Different tribes used different materials, weaving techniques, basket shapes, and characteristic patterns

Northeast Indian baskets

• traditionally made out of pounded ash splints or braided sweetgrass

Southeast Indian baskets

• traditionally from bundled pine needles or rivercane wicker.

Northwest Coast Indians

• typically weave with cedar bark, swamp grass, and spruce root.

Southwest Indians

• Southwest and California Indians make Southwest and California Indians make baskets from tightly coiled sumac, baskets from tightly coiled sumac, yucca, or willow wood, yucca, or willow wood,

• Hopi, Navajo, Paiute, Apache and Hopi, Navajo, Paiute, Apache and Tohono O'odam (Papago) produce the Tohono O'odam (Papago) produce the hand-woven baskets that we use as a hand-woven baskets that we use as a selection baseselection base

Traditions

• Passed down by the women in the family

• In earlier days, baskets accompanied Indian people throughout their lives

• Babies were carried in baskets, meals were prepared and cooked in them, worldly goods were stored in them, and people were buried in them.

Basket-weaving Today

• Today, baskets serve as markers of cultural pride and inheritance. Some are used on religious occasions. And hundreds of weavers make baskets for sale.

Weaving techniques

• Basket weaving techniques

Four basic weaving techniques are used to construct baskets: wicker, plaiting, twining, and coiling

Coiling

• Coiling begins at the center of a basket and grows upon itself in spiral rounds, each attached to the round before

• In coiling, designs are not made by changing the weave, but rather by using a different color sewing thread.

examples