Native American Baskets
Basket making has been a necessary skill in many cultures for hundreds of years. The Native American baskets we talk about on this website are relatively new. Between 1900 and 1930 there was a lot of interest in Native American culture in the USA. This was tied into the industrial arts movement which was popular at the same time. The result was numerous educators and education advocates promoting arts and crafts as a valuable part of the educational curriculum. Basket making was just one of many skills promoted for teaching youngsters skills that would serve them well in the job market.
Native American symbolism and themes were popular. The effect of this on the modern Native American basket market is there are many baskets from that time that look very "Indian". If you can't identify raffia and don't know how popular these baskets were, you are apt to spend more than you should buying what you think is an "old indian basket".
We will be reproducing the contents of three of these books here so you can educate yourself about what they look like, and how to identify them. On the good side, the material in these books will also help you understand how baskets are made.
"Basket Making" by the A. Flanagan Company of Chicago is an undated 70 page booklet that describes in detail how to make baskets. This will give you a good basis for understanding basket construction in general. You will also see the application of Native American motifs to the baskets they illustrate. We plan to publish the full text of this book and you can see it by clicking the link above.
"Hammett's Catalog. Books - Materials for Basket Making" is a 32 page basket supplies book published in 1924. Besides raffia they sell other basket materials such as ash splints, and pine needles. Perhaps most interesting is the list of basket making titles of which there are at least 25.
"Practical and Artistic Basketry is an actual 142 page book published in 1904. The author covers a variety of basket making techniques with raffia, willow and other materials in a variety of styles. The black and white photographs will make it clear how much the baskets created with these instructions look like Native American Baskets.