The Elizabeth Cole Butler Collection.

The Pomo are seven distinct cultural groups that historically occupied the California coast from south of the Russian River northward to the Fort Bragg area and inland to the region around Clear Lake. Although the Pomo made a variety of baskets, they are best known for finely coiled baskets such as these. The basket on the left is constructed with a three-coil foundation. The woven designs on Pomo baskets are usually geometric; figurative designs are rare. Pomo weavers often add feathers and clam shell beads as further ornamentation. The dark plumes are quail topknots, frequently used as accents around the basket rims. The red feathers, from the acorn woodpecker, are very fine; each tuft on the basket is made of several feathers that have been twisted together.

Museum Purchase: Caroline Ladd Pratt Fund.

Museum Purchase: Caroline Ladd Pratt Fund.

Gift of Pratt Institute

Gift of Edna Ebling

Earplugs. A red-feathered disk is surrounded by white beads and attached to a carved piece of bone. Pendants of abalone are suspended from the red disk.

At either side of this bunch of owl feathers are one or two pairs of triple pronged ceremonial hairpins. Wire is used as their base as the desired effect is to make them tremble as the dancer moves.

This is a bunch of owl feathers that would be tied into a hairnet and worn on the back of the dancer's head. They would be secrued with the pin. See 08.491.8802

Plume stick consisting of a wooden handle and two feathers attached to the handle by two cords of white beads.This pin would be stuck into the bunch of owl feathers (08.491.8807). These items are part of the feathered headgear stuck into a hairnet and tied at the back of a dancer's head.