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Specific Techniques

Birch bark was cut to size, steamed, folded and sewn at corners. Wood rim is lashed with spruce root, outside scraped to decorate.

Cultural Context

domestic storage; cooking; transport

History Of Use

Basketry filled a vital need as containers for storage domestic use and transportation of goods. Some had multiple uses; others were made for specific functions. After European contact, used for trade and sale items. Forms have been altered to meet European tastes. Basketry making was and is a women's art.

Description

Basket with oval mouth that tapers to a square base. Spruce root (?) is used to stitch the bark together and to finish the rim by lashing a reinforcing strip of wood to the upper edge using a series of repeatedly increasing and decreasing lengths of stitch (up to 1 cm) to form a jagged pattern. A scraping technique is used to decorate the basket in horizontal bands of light and dark. Pattern consists of three dark horizontal bands at the top followed by a repetition of a wider band saw-toothed on both upper and lower edges and two narrow horizontal bands; this is repeated four times. The decoration does not quite match on both sides (on one side, the last two horizontal bands do not appear). The top of the rim has the remains of a red thread flanked on both sides by a green thread that was woven into the spruce stitching.