Native American Art

Basketsthe oldest art form

Native American Art Basket weaving is known as

the oldest and most widespread of handicrafts and has been passed down through the ages from generation to generation, continent to continent. Your ancestors, no matter who they were or where they were from, made baskets.

Native American Art Baskets have been made by

every civilization in every part of the world. Among the oldest known examples are basket fragments dating from about 10,000 years ago, found in Utah. Basketry has also been found preserved in peat bogs, under water, or in a carbonized state.

Native American Art Basket making is an old

form of art, born out of the necessity for carrying, storing and holding objects. Baskets would be made differently depending on their use. Some examples would be berry baskets, market baskets, bread baskets, or laundry baskets.

Native American Art Construction

The stems or stalks are peeled for the bark or interior fibers, or root fibers and leaves and grass stems are used. Baskets can be woven out of almost anything, but it requires great skill and much knowledge.

Native American Art Construction

The roots, stems, bark, leaves and flowers of different plants produce the broad range of colors in most baskets. Identical plant materials gathered in different seasons may produce different colors.

Native American Art Construction

Some basketmakers use commercial dyes to obtain colors not available from plants or to alter or intensify the effects produced by vegetal material. But most basketmakers today prefer to produce their colors in traditional ways or experiment with plants near their homes.

Native American Art Construction

Basketmakers must know which plants in their area are suitable, where they grow, their special properties, the best season to gather them, and how they must be processed and stored.

Native American Art Consruction This knowledge is

passed down from one generation to the next - when to collect leaves, roots, stems, flowers or seeds - how to prepare colors or fibers - boiling, drying, combining with other ingredients.

Native American ArtPotawatomi Indians used black ash, sweetgrass, birch bark for basket weaving. They wove a kind of cloth from cedar bark and from bast fibers, or plant fibre. Woven bags of bast fibers were used for storage vessels. Nothing was wasted.

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Native American ArtConstruction Methods Woven baskets have two sets of

elements: Warps - Rigid spokes around which more pliable elements, Wefts or weavers are passed over and under. In the simplest construction, a weaver is passed over and then under every other spoke, but many patterns are also possible.

The addition of twining, triple and quad weaving, twill patterns and a wide array of colors and sizes makes for an unlimited possibility in creating an interesting and functional variety of baskets.

Native American Art Baskets

Baskets were almost a lost art. Stories are how American Indians passed their knowledge to their children. This oral tradition is in most Indian art.

Potawatomi basket weaver, 1895

Native American Art This basket was woven

of sumac by Elsie Holiday, whose mother-in-law taught her how to weave. Most basket makers are taught by their relatives - parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles.

Native American ArtBasket weaving was once a skill as fundamental to American Indian culture as blacksmithing was to European settlers and, in the 1800s, provided a connection between the early settlers and native people.It was a natural economic niche for native people once the settlers moved in. It was a way for Native Americans to preserve their culture and interact with this new influence.

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George Pigeon keeping the art of basket

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Native American ArtMary Holiday Black has trained 9 of her children to make baskets. Maryhas received many national awards. She says “There are many basket stories. If we stop making the baskets, we lose the stories.”

Each ceremonial basket has a story & a song which are part of a healing, wedding, to bring rain, or for other important events.

Native American Art This basket tells a

lesson about snakes

Native American ArtThe tradition of basket weaving was passed down to this artist, whose basket tells the Story of Emergence into the world. It explains the break in the rings in the center of many designs.

Native American ArtBasket Folklore• The Potawatomi Indians believe

that there is an old woman in the moon weaving a basket. When she is finished, the world will be destroyed. However, from time to time a dog called by the white man "Eclipse" comes along and ruins her work, so she has to start over again. Her work will continue forever as will my love of baskets and weaving, the art of our ancestors and craft of our children.