I stumbled onto something fine the other day – the basket exhibit at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum.

It’s a perfect gem of an exhibit; just the size for someone whose brain is full from the Viking and crocodile exhibits upstairs. It invited me in with the promise that this would be quick. “Look”, it whispered, “only the top halves of the display cases are full of baskets; it’s easy.”

It was true. Below the baskets, from my waist to the floor, the birds of the Owens Valley skulked, swam, and sang amongst the local plants. They were unlabeled, for ambience only, no learning required. I walked right in.

The baskets were made by the Paiutes and Shoshones in and around Owens Valley, the high desert that lies between the Sierra Nevada on the west and the White and Inyo Mountains on the east. The display was quiet and soothing, the colors subtle, rather like the land from which the baskets had come.

My brain resisted reading the tags until I got curious about some shallow, round baskets, woven so loosely that things would surely fall through the bottom. That was the point, I read. They were winnowing baskets, used to separate seeds or grains from their hulls. Nearby were the seed beaters – flat baskets with handles – that were used to separate the seeds from the plants. Here and there, were little bowl-shaped baskets that were actually hats, and many storage containers of all sizes and shapes. Propped against one of these was a narrow-necked water jug with a pointed bottom.

Water? In a basket? With a tippy bottom? Could it possibly have been designed to lose water any faster?

But no, it was for real, the tag explained. The water jug was tightly woven and the inside was sealed with pitch from the pinyon pine tree. The bottom was pointed so it could stand upright in the sand and fit snugly in a large burden basket.

My interest was piqued. The valley is too low for pinyon pines. Did the Paiutes trek into the White & Inyo Mountains and the Sierra for pitch? Yes, said the tags, they migrated across the valley and up both sides to collect pitch, pine nuts, and other foods that were available seasonally. They also hiked over the high Sierra passes with baskets of obsidian, pine nuts, and salt to trade for baskets of berries and acorns from the Indian tribes of the San Joaquin Valley. As I pictured their migrations, two worlds began to merge, the world of the people who had lived there for thousands of years and the one I’ve known for 40-some.

The exhibit still felt quiet and soothing but the colors of the baskets began to emerge. At first glance, the baskets seemed monochromatic with just the tan of the willows and the pale wheat-colored of the grasses. Then I began to see the designs and how they differed from one group to another. The Paiutes seemed to favor woven willow baskets with abstract designs and the Shoshones favored coiled baskets of grass, often decorated with images of identifiable animals. The next thing that caught my eye was the colors. A rich coral stripe was the feather of a red-shafted flicker, a big woodpecker. A reddish brown strand was Joshua Tree root and a black one came from a feisty acacia known variously as Devil’s Claw, Cat’s Claw, or Tearblanket. The designs on the cradleboards, made by each mother on the day her baby was born, were determined by gender of the newborn. If it were a boy, she deco- rated the sun shield with a simple, straightforward design, but if it were a girl she made a complex, often zigzagged pattern.

One of the biggest baskets was the loosely woven, conical “burden basket”. It was wide open at the top, maybe two feet across, and almost as deep, making it quite capacious and potentially very heavy (I could imagine several of those pointed water jugs in the bottom). A length of cord was attached at opposite sides of the rim so a woman could sling it across her back and let the weight hold it against her forehead. That’s what those little bowl-like hats were for, to ease the pain.

This reminded me of Ramona, an early California novel that was dramatized for decades at the Ramona Pageant (a show presented by the people of Hemet and San Jacinto in Riverside County since 1923). When Ramona ran away from her aunt’s rancho to marry her Indian lover, Alessandro, she carried her belongings in the burden basket he had given her. “Oh my poor little dove,” he cried when he saw the deep grooves in her otherwise flawless brow, “If I’d thought you’d actually use it I would have given you the hat!” And here was Ramona’s little hat!

By this time I was charmed by the baskets and beginning to wonder how they were made so I was pleased to find an instructional video behind the exhibit. I pushed a few buttons, and saw a present-day basket maker, Richard Stewart, demonstrate how to strip willow stems and weave them into baskets. He’d learned basketry, along with other Paiute traditions, from his beloved grandmother and now tries to preserve the traditions by teaching them to others.

BASKET MAKING METHODOLOGY

From Mr. Stewart and from subsequent reading, I gathered that, for all the enormous variety in baskets around the world, most are made essentially the same way — by weaving. Two variations on plain weaving are coiling and plaiting. Anything that isn’t coiled or plaited is simply “woven” like the generic laundry.

Weaving a basket (plain weaving) is similar to weaving a fabric. For fabric you stretch a lot of sturdy foundation threads lengthwise on a frame, making a warp. Then you run a lighter thread — the weft — across them, threading it over one, under one, over one, etc. A basket is different, of course, in that it is three- dimensional with a sturdier warp.

The warp and weft can be the same size, as in willow baskets, or the weft can be made of finer materials such as agave fibers and the thin bark of the willow. This makes a tighter weave that allows the weaver to make more intricate designs, and even hold water

Coiling, like plain weaving, is based on a strong foundation. Instead of the multiple warp strands, there is only one foundation strand. It can be continuous, like a vine, but it often consists of short, fine materials (like grass or pine needles) that are worked into bundles and bound into a long rope. The rope is sewn or woven with the weft threads into a flat spiral for the bottom of a basket. To start the sides, the rope is laid atop the previous coil and bound to it with the weft thread. Subsequent rounds are likewise bound to the lower coils. The shape can be changed gradually by placing sub- sequent rounds more or less squarely on previous coils.

Coiling looks like more work than plain weaving but a nearly flat coiled basket offers the artist a “canvas.”

Plaiting is another kind of weaving Instead of weaving one weft thread at right angles through many warp threads, one weaves many weft and warp threads at the same time and at acute angles. This produces a diagonal pattern. It’s most often used in flat baskets, such as purses, but can also make lovely, delicate bowl-shaped baskets. You may have seen hats made this way in Hawaii. “Ten minutes,” someone will promise you, then deftly slit the long edge off a palm frond and wrap it around your head for size. While you’re considering the offer, he plaits the unruly “feathers” into the neat brim of an open topped hat. Just as you say “okay,” he weaves the ends of the feathers back across the brim making a jaunty fringe, and hands you your hat.

Traditionally, people have woven their baskets from plants near home and used the methods that worked best with those plants. The Pauites wove the abundant willows that grew by the Owens River and the Shoshones coiled the grasses that grew in the drier Panamint Valley. Perhaps, at one time, the Shoshones, too, wove with willows, then moved into this dry land of grass and adapted to the grasses.

I left the museum, bemused. When I was in college and friends took classes that sounded easy or trivial, we’d joke that they were taking Basket Weaving 101. As far as I know, no one really did take Basket Weaving, but we should have. It sparks a natural interest in history, anthropology, botany, and geography, some of which have great field trips. What better way to get to know your world and the world of the past?

THE WORLD OF BASKET MATERIALS

The world of basket material is much broader than the willow, pine needles, and grass I’d been seeing in the museum. In Northern California, for instance, local tribes — immune to poison oak – wove their baskets from its supple vines. In the world’s northern forests, people have traditionally woven with spruce roots and tree branches split into workable strips. Hot, wet places like Southeast Asia provide the world with rattan, still one of the world’s most widely used materials in basket and furniture mak- ing. The versatile bamboo grows in both temperate and tropical areas. Prairies have grasses to bundle and plait while wetlands give us reeds, rushes, and sedges. Deserts grow succulents like yucca and agave that provide fiber for fabric and baskets. The tropics give us palm trees, such as the popular raffia palm in Madagascar.

Many of the plants require a lot of preparation – peeling, splitting, drying, de- thorning, tenderizing – before they can be used for baskets. It’s amazing that people have seen beyond the thorny, rigid, mushy exteriors of so many plants and tamed them into such a variety of uses.

FOLK ART OR FUNCTION – THE USES OF BASKETS

Baskets and basketry techniques have made life easier in thousands of ways. We still use wastebaskets, laundry hampers, and grocery baskets, even though most of them are made of plastic or steel. In the garden we collect fruit and flowers in “real” baskets, use bamboo rakes, and put up latticework fences. Some people even grow their own “living fences” by weaving long stemmed plants into barriers.

People all over the world still use baskets to catch fish and lobsters. Recreational fishermen tuck their catch into “creels” while they fish for more.

Rattan and wicker furniture continue to be popular. Baby cribs and bassinets are still often made of wicker. In countries that use more bicycles than cars, there are wondrous basket-like panniers and baby carriers woven with natural fibers. Basket making has kept up with the times, too. You can buy in-and out baskets for your desk, baskets to house your CD’s and baskets to corral your remotes.

And now back to our journey…The following weekend I headed out the Pasadena Freeway to the attractive Southwest Museum on Mount Washington and looked at baskets made by Utes in Utah, Tlingit in British Columbia, and Papago in Arizona, to name a few.

When they all began to look alike, I fled to the gift shop for a helpful book. Instead I got a tiny, fragrant Tarahumara pine needle basket from Mexico and a kit for making my own. This would be the best education, I thought.

After an hour of struggling with too many pine needles and too few fingers, I wanted a teacher. I called the store Wildfiber in Santa Monica because the name suggested that they might tame wild plants, maybe even there in the shop.

“Of course we do,” they said. “You missed Anne Dinsdale’s sea grass basket class but she’s doing pine needles on March 16”. They even gave me her phone number.

Anne taught basket weaving and fiber arts at Wildfiber and at The Weavers’ Cottage in Santa Clarita, She had a small farm in Agua Dulce with a willow tree and a ponderosa pine for basket materials. She was very comforting, and said “Of course you don’t have enough fingers. Sometimes I borrowed some from a friend or use pliers, clothespins, chin, elbow, teeth, or toes.” She also thought that maybe the pine needles hadn’t soaked long enough. Most basket materials need to be soaked or pounded to be flexible enough to weave. I decided to wait until March to finish my basket. If you’re interested in baskets, watch the museum and gallery listings for upcoming shows. Go to the Indian Art Show twice a year in Santa Monica’s Civic Auditorium. Check out the visitor’s centers in State and National Parks.

Call the numbers listed below if you are interested in finding out more, or if you are interested in making baskets yourself.

LOCAL BASKETRY INFORMATION & REFERENCES

Los Angeles Basketry Guild

Wildfiber  1453 14th St E, Santa Monica, CA 90404 310-458-2748 (They no longer do basket weaving10

MORE THINGS TO READ

Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson, 1884

Basketry: A World Guide to Traditional Techniques by Bryan Sentence, Thames & Hudson, 2001.

Early Uses of California Plants by Edward K. Balls, University of California Press, 1962.

Guide to Highway 395, Los Angeles to Reno by Ginny Clark, Western Trails Publications, 1992.

Original issue March-April 2002

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Valerie Cooley lived in West Los Angeles when this was originally written. She currently lives in Coos Bay, Oregon. She still loves folk music, dancing, and crafts. She co-chaired the Banner Committee for the CTMS Summer Solstice Festival where she was able to indulge her love of pretty colors, fabrics, and the enthusiasm of the people who put them together.