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Artworks
UNIDENTIFIED TLINGIT ARTIST
Open Basket, 19th centuryspruce root, natural and dyed bear grass, 6 x 7.5 x 7.5 in (15.2 x 19.1 x 19.1 cm)Further images
Woven upright from the base to the rim, the almost watertight weave of this Tlingit basket delicately slants down to the right. Atop the horizontal weft strands of the basket,...Woven upright from the base to the rim, the almost watertight weave of this Tlingit basket delicately slants down to the right. Atop the horizontal weft strands of the basket, the false embroidered upper and lower rows of design are almost curved and run across the basket’s surface. The middle row of checkered linework is firmly in the centre, a solid canvas for the false embroidery’s weave to slant up to the right against the main body of the basket. Possibly the smallest of three baskets used for berry picking, one can imagine this work being slowly filled with an afternoon’s work, eventually to be emptied into a large basket on the picker’s back.
References: For a detailed introduction to Tlingit and Haida baskets see Sharon Busby, Spruce Root Basketry of the Haida and Tlingit, (Seattle: Marquand Books / University of Washington Press, 2003). For a brief discussion of Tlingit baskets see Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh & William A.Turnbaugh, Indian Baskets, (West Chester, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd. in collaboration with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 1986), p. 150. See also Karen Petkau, “Baskets: Carrying a Culture. The Distinctive Regional Styles of Basketmaking Nations in the Pacific Northwest” Bachelor, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, 2022, p. 24-31.Provenance
Private Collection, Calgary, AB.
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