Antique Native American Basketry Of Western North America

Selected by American Indian Art Magazine as one of the 40 best publications on Native American Art in the last 40 years This book is a comprehensive guide to the identification of Antique Native American baskets, specifically basket making tribes of western North American. It is not a formal anthropology text, but rather an organized compendium of Native basketry information that blends previous anthropologic studies and the experience of the authors. The text defines how collectors, curators, dealers, auction personnel, and academics can systematically approach tribal identification of Native American basketry. It does this by clarifying the authors' rational for tribal groupings based on basket types and not on language or other cultural traits. It explains multiple Native American basket making materials and techniques and describes how understanding this information can lead to accurate tribal attribution. This knowledge is essential in developing connoisseurship and will enhance an appreciation of this wonderful Native American art form.

The origins of basketry are lost in the mists of prehistory, but making baskets is certainly one of the oldest and most nearly universal crafts of mankind. In the Americas, basket artifacts found in caves in Utah have been dated at 7000 B.C., while twined baskets said to be at least 5,000 years old have been uncovered in Peru. In the American Southwest, an entire Indian culture (ca. 100–700 A.D.) is known as "Basket Maker" because of the distinctive baskets it produced. This exhaustive survey (two volumes in one) of American Indian basketry, perhaps the finest book ever published on the subject, documents basketmaking throughout the Americas — in Eastern North America, Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, Western Canada, Oregon, California and the Interior Basin, as well as Mexico, Central and South America. Spanning a wide range of indigenous cultures (Aleutian, Tlinkit, Shoshonean, Athapascam, etc.), the detailed, carefully researched discussions in this book offer a wealth of information about woven and coiled basketry, watertight basketry, materials, basketmaking techniques and preparation, ornamentation and symbolism, as well as the uses of baskets as receptacles, in preparing and serving food, for gleaning and milling, in mortuary customs, in religion and social life, in trapping, carrying water, and in many other areas of Indian life. An interesting and informative chapter on collectors and collections and the preservation of baskets, followed by a helpful biography, rounds out the book. In addition, the author, once Curator of Ethnology at the U.S. National Museum (part of the Smithsonian Institution), enhanced this encyclopedic study with over 450 excellent photographs and illustrations. For collectors, preservationists, anthropologists, students of crafts and culture, modern basketmakers, this is an indispensable reference — a massively rich source of information about baskets, the peoples who made them, how they were made, and their role in native American life and culture.

This bibliography includes more than 1,100 entries from books, journals, newspaper articles, and dissertations concerning North American Indian basketry. More general cultural works with some information on basketry are also included, and the materials date from early ethnographic work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to 1987. . . . The introduction offers a good overview of research in Native American basketry, and although the annotations vary greatly in thoroughness and length, they are generally useful. This unique, well-produced bibliography is recommended for collections supporting programs in anthropology, crafts, or Native American Studies. Choice Interest in Native American basketry dates from the late 1800s, when an enthusiastic public, together with curators, academic collectors, and archaeologists, first began to appreciate the value and uniqueness of these beautiful hand-crafted artifacts. This bibliography is the first comprehensive guide to publications on the subject. Organized by major cultural areas of North America, it offers annotated listings of books, journal articles, dissertations, theses, monographs, and selected newspaper articles published over the last 100 years. In his introductory essay, Porter discusses the history of Native American basket making and the findings and views of some of the anthropologists, archaeologists, and popular writers whose works contribute to our knowledge of the subject. The bibliography is divided into eleven sections, each dealing with a specific geographical/cultural area. Entries are cross-referenced, and a comprehensive index gives convenient access to authors, titles, and subjects.

Over 750 color photographs illustrate this long-awaited guide for collectors of vintage Native American basketry. Decades of basketry research inform the text, guiding basket lovers to a better understanding of these woven treasures. Clear images and concise descriptions, presented in an extended gallery showcasing hundreds of baskets, delineate specific tribal styles within Native North America's nine basketry regions: Southwest, Great Basin, California, Plateau, Northwest Coast, Arctic and Subarctic, Plains, Southeast, and Northeast. Unique to this book is an in-depth comparison of imported baskets being passed off as American Indian work. The cultural and historical background as well as the influence of the "Indian basket craze" are also examined. Valuable guidance on buying, selling, and caring for baskets includes a frank discussion of legal issues impacting basket collectors. Rounding out this essential reference are comprehensive regional bibliographies, Internet resource listings, and a directory of American museums exhibiting Native American baskets.

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Directory of museums, societies, libraries, galleries, experts, and auctioneers.