Posted 9 years ago
SABCA
(2 items)
My husband found it at a sale and I kept it, years ago. I've been told it's made of pine needles, others say the materials are to fat to be pine needles. I have no clue as to the wood in the lid and the bottom or how the designs o the basket were made. It smells like someone might have kept Potpourri in it, I've had nothing in it. It is about 6Lx4 & 1/4 inches W and about 2 & 1/2 inches high including the carved head. I've been told it could be from South America or New England and Florida (those were the three opinions). I've seen a basket on CW that has a wood bottom and it was attributed to the Seminoles, but I really don't know. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I can positively identify your basket, which is from none of the places mentioned, nor is it made from pine needles. It's a traditional style of basket made in Lombok, Indonesia, woven from rattan.
They are illustrated in "Art of the Basket, Traditional Basketry from Around the World" by Bryan Sentance, or a web search for "Lombok carved lid basket" will show lots of examples.
Canyon Road....Super! Thank you so much! I really appreciate knowing about it. Never even entered my little brain to do a search on line! Sometimes there are "duh" moments in life, this is one of them for me :) Really nice to know about it and now I can share the info with the folks that gave me other choices.
You approached identifying this exactly right...find a board or forum that specializes in similar items, and post for help. Searching on line, especially when it comes to things like baskets, can be a frustrating and futile effort, since so many web sites misidentify items like this, and when others then use those sites to identify their own items, the problem quickly compounds, and very few thing end up correctly identified.
I always recommend the book "Art of the Basket, Traditional Basketry from Around the World" by Bryan Sentance, as a starting point for baskets. This type of Lombok basket is shown on page 90