Posted 9 years ago
Smiles10
(1 item)
This basket has been in my family for years. We don't know where it's from but think it's Navajo. It's about 21 inches tal and has horses and cacti on it. Any info on this basket would be helpful.
Navajo woven basket | ||
| Native American Antiques959 of 1959 |  |  |
Welcome to CW, what a nice piece to start with.
Regards
Alan
No, not Navajo. It's an early Papago (now called Tohono O'odham) from southern Arizona. Identifying features are the material used, the black stitching on the rim, the form itself (discussed in Clara Tanner's "Indian Baskets of the Southwest"), and lastly, the cactus design. It was always a popular motif on Papago basketry. It's a saguaro cactus, found in the area where the Papago live, (not found in the Navajo area) and an important part of the Papago culture. When it's depicted on their baskets, it almost always has those four black lines sticking up from the "arms."
Despite the number of baskets you see identified on eBay as "Navajo," the fact is, virtually none of those were made by Navajo weavers. Until recently, they seldom made baskets at all, because so many taboos and religious/cultural restrictions were imposed on weaving baskets, that even the ceremonial "Navajo wedding baskets" that they needed for their ceremonies, were almost always made for them by Ute or Paiute weavers. Only a handful of Navajo basket weavers made baskets themselves, and those were exclusively the traditional ceremonial wedding baskets. It wasn't until the 1970s that some of the taboos and restrictions on basket making were relaxed, which allowed teaching the art in schools, and meant that one family, especially (led by Peggy Black) began producing baskets for the collector market.