Button Item Number: Nb11.269 from the MOA: University of British Columbia

Description

Tightly woven button with a grey circle at the centre with an alternating yellow and red border (one row). This is contained within a blue circular line. Two black thunderbirds are on each side of the central motif with five alternating yellow and orange triangles across the wingspan. Alternating red and yellow triangles are on the outer border of the button and green on the edge. Basketry continues on the reverse with a blue-grey outer border for two rows.

Iconographic Meaning

Thunderbird is an important mythical being associated with whaling.

Specific Techniques

Originally grass for basketry was collected in the summer, gathered, prepared, split, dyed, dried and stored for winter use.

Narrative

Part of a set of eight woven buttons, made of wrapped-twine basketry over cardboard discs; created by Ahousaht weaver Nellie Jacobson. Eagerly sought by collectors, such pieces were nevertheless considered (and priced) as trinkets and souvenirs. In a letter to the collector in the 1940s, Jacobson writes, “If anybody admires the buttons, tell them they are worth $1.00, the kind I am sending you. Others 75¢, little coarser.” She also made an array of baskets for sale, from lidded pika-uu (trinket baskets) to larger containers and zippered purses, each decorated with her characteristic interpretations of thunderbirds as well as canoes, whales, and geometric patterns. As a young girl, she began learning from her grandmother how to make floor mats, ropes, hats, and shawls of cedar bark, all used by her family. In collections of Nuu-chah-nulth basketry, often the name of the weaver was not recorded; this set of documented buttons can help to attach a name, and a history, to the work.