Openwork basket with fret work around the center and arrow forms around the base.

By exchange

Twined cylindrical basket with false embroidery tightly woven into a fret and arrow design in red and ivory . Examined by Deborah Head, a Tlingit/Haida basket maker on 6/17/09, who mentioned that this basket has a different type of border and is important for that reason. She also said that the medium is spruce root. Condition: good.

Museum Expedition 1905, Museum Collection Fund

The object is a coiled, burden basket with imbricated geometric figures. There are some outer surface losses of light colored fibers. Overall condition good.

The object is a basket with an imbricated pattern made from brown bark, yellow bark, and ivory-yellow grass wrapped over cedar root. Imbrication is a regular overlapping arrangement technique that is used exclusively by Native Americans of the Plateau and Northwest Coast areas. The Klikitat maker used a coil technique that is more like sewing than weaving. Coiled baskets are built up spirally from the center and require two components: the first is a central core of rods or grasses serving as a foundation for the second component which is a group of fibers that simultaneously wrap around the foundation and stitch the coils together. An awl creates holes in the foundation through which fibers are pulled or stitched. While sewing is in process, imbrication decoration is also going forward. Imbrication involves wrapping dyed grasses into the basket, forming an overlapping pattern. The basket is in stable condition.

Woven hat painted by Native American artist Tom Price with the symbol of a leading family in black, red, and blue green. The design is of Tcamaos, the mythological personification of submerged driftwood that comes to the surface and causes damage to canoes when users aren't watching. The red ovoid form that is part of the artist's personal style as well as the red star on the crown help to identify Tom Price as the painter of the hat. CONDITION: Stable and fair. There are numerous repairs with minor cracks and breaks. The blue green paint around the eyes has almost completely flaked off.

This woven teapot is missing the knob from it's lid. It is an excelent example of the creativity of weavers early in the 20th century to make objects aimed at a tourist and collectors' market as the teapot was made to appeal to non-Native buyers.

Eagle Dancer (Kwahu) Kachina Doll. Figure is carved from one piece of cottonwood root. He stands with PR arm raised and PL arm lower with both outstretched with pair of 'eagle' wings on arms and back. Chest is ½ yellow and ½ blue over pink painted body. Arms from elbow to wrist have the opposite colors from the chest. Legs are painted to match the chest. He wears a carved white kilt. He wears a blue and white beaded necklace. The helmet style mask has large, disk-like red ears with cotton stuffed near his head where they are attached and turquoise bead loop earrings. He has a feathered headdress in back on his head. His PR foot is raised. Both feet hare barefoot. His beak is open and you can see his red tongue. Wears a fur ruff around his neck. The eagle dance is a prayer for good crops, rain, and plentiful eagle feathers as their feathers are important in many ceremonies because the bird is thought to be sacred. This Kachina usually appears in a group of several forming a dance troop, squawking and imitating eagle behavior while the Koyemshi (mudhead clowns) sing to them. The sponsoring kiva must fast, abstain from sex, and no eating of salty or fatty foods before the dance.

08.491.8983 basket is on the right. (See also 08.491.8679 description.) The cooking basket (bush-ka) has the design of the mountain-quail top-knot. This design was Wilson's best known design. The mountain-quail has a very long, straight top knot. Author Sally Bates suggests that this design may have been favored as the weaver's name, Oymutnee, meant "the sound made by a quail." Baskets such as this one seem to be characteristic of the Maidu community of Mikchopedo at Chico, CA.