113/2 Shelves

Basket

L2024.3.60

Vasiform ash splint basket, with radial start, intact bail, and rim affixed with clinched nails. Marked "Daisey."

Occasionally the Sweetsers made exquisite small, vase-shaped baskets. This one found in Essex Junction, Vermont, was made with extraordinary precision in the splints, the weaving, and the distinctive clinched nail rim, and can be considered a piece of Art.

Basket

L2024.3.100a-b

Round basket with lid. Woven of black ash splints. Both basket and lid are decorated with three horizontal bands of twisted splints. Lid has small, integral bail.

Basket

2004.18.1a-b

Round basket and lid woven from split and plaited sweetgrass. The Lid is woven in alternating sections of black-dyed weavers and plaited sweetgrass with six splint loops at the center. The basket is made of black-dyed splint weavers at the bottom and plaited sweetgrass at the top.

Owned by the Martin or Johnson families of Plainfield, Vermont

Basket

L2024.3.99

Round basket, daub dyed blue, radial start and thin weavers

This basket style is much more common in Maine, while the more westerly examples tend to have square bottoms formed by the rectilinear pattern of the weavers. It may be an import from further east but is good for comparative purposes.

Basket

L2024.3.74

Square basket woven of ash splints with varying width weavers. Select splints are dyed on the exterior surface blue or red.

This large utility basket from the Northeast Kingdom has varying width weavers; with some of them “daub-dyed” with Prussian blue and red ochre. You can see that the dye only appears on the outside faces of the splints. Although the color is similar to the much more common round “Penobscot” radial-start baskets, their construction technique, based on a checkerboard start is regionally distinctive.

Basket

L2024.3.103

Round, open-work, ash splint basket with attached ash handles. Radial start with bound rim. Mostly narrow natural splints with two wide bands near rim. Bands dyed yellow and blue.

This early open work basket from Morrisville, VT with the two loop handles was produced in prodigious quantities if surviving examples are any indication. This one is illustrated because it not only has the usual Prussian blue daub- dye but applied red [don't see red in photo] and a rare yellow pigment as well.

Basket

L2024.3.91a-b

Round woven basket and lid constructed of ash splints and sweetgrass.

This little ash splint and sweetgrass “fancy basket,” along with L2024.3.92a-b, are very important because they were sold to Mrs. Waterman of Johnson, Vermont in the 1920’s or early 30’s by "Gypsies" who camped on a farm to the west of town. Almost all ash and sweetgrass fancy baskets lack such documentation and could have been made anywhere and brought back to Vermont as souvenirs. There are interesting interview notes on what the people of Johnson thought of the "Gypsies" at the time.

Basket

L2024.3.105

Open-work, ash splint basket. Varying width splints alternating blue dyed and natural. Square base with round top. Slightly Vasiform.

This basket is the archetype of the late 1800’s Vermont Abenaki basket. It is classed as an “open work basket,” and is the most commonly found basket with good Vermont Native provenance, although this one’s origin is a bit less secure. Although it is now missing the two loop handles, the rest of it is in great shape. One thing that is interesting is that the dye is not just on the outside, like other work baskets such as L2024.3.103, but it also stains the inside of the splints, as can be seen in the illustration. One of the defining separations between 19th and 20th century baskets is the fact that 20th century splints were submerged in the dye which stains both sides. This may be a transitional basket using a dark, non-fugitive pigment like earlier baskets, while dipping rather than daubing on the dye -- like later basketry examples.

Basket

L2024.3.75

Round basket with square base woven of ash splints. Select splints are dyed on the outer surface either blue or red.

This small utility basket from central New Hampshire has varying width weavers with select splints “daub-dyed,” dyed on one surface only, with Prussian blue and red ochre. These small baskets are uncommon.

Basket

L2024.3.61

Ash splint basket made in the Sweetser style. Round form with bound rim and bent-wood bail.

Newt Washburn tourist basket

Basket

L2024.3.92a-b

Small, round, lidded trinket basket woven of sweetgrass and ash splints. Band of decorative, twisted splints around midline of basket.

This little ash splint and sweetgrass “fancy basket,” along with L2024.3.91a-b, is very important because they were sold to Mrs. Waterman of Johnson, Vermont in the 1920’s or early 30’s by "Gypsies" who camped on a farm to the west of town. Almost all ash and sweetgrass fancy baskets lack such documentation and could have been made anywhere and brought back to Vermont as souvenirs. There are interesting interview notes on what the people of Johnson thought of the "Gypsies" at the time.

Basket

2011.9.1a-b

Green splint basket with curlicues and sweetgrass edging. One row of curlicues on the lid and one on the side of the basket. The weavers are narrow, 1/16" wide, except for row with curlicue. The rim of the basket is banded on the outside by dark green splint and on the inside by natural color splint and wound with green (no breaks). The lid is banded on the outside with sweetgrass and the inside by green splint and wound with green splint (no breaks).

Owned by Cora C. Calderari

Basket

L2024.3.73a-b

Incomplete strawberry basket with mold

Wiseman comments: This was purchased from an antique dealer, who I trust, bought it from a yard sale in Barnstead, NH. No more is known of the provenance. The red basket preform is an obvious incomplete “strawberry” basket sill tightly clinging to its softwood mold. It was an important purchase in that there are scores of these in-progress baskets on their mold from better known Haudenosaunee and Wabanaki basket making areas, and this one was at least in the American Abenaki area for a long time.

Basket

L2024.3.106

Open-work, ash splint basket. Square base and round rim.

Wiseman comments: This is a questionable find that I am adding to the mix because of the associated oral history. They are one of the more common types of baskets found in new England despite their terrible fragility. I had learned long ago, when I began antiques collecting, that these were “cheese baskets,” often made in prodigious numbers by the Shakers. Ever since, I ignored them completely even though the rims looked identical to Native New England baskets. In 1999, Billie Largy, a Nulhegan elder told me that these were herb drying baskets, and five years (I think) later at the “Antiques Collaborative” group in Quechee, I found another that was sold as an Abenaki Herb basket from Vermont. I personally could not tell it from a cheese basket, but it was not expensive, so I bought it to reinforce Billie’s historical narrative. I later got in touch with the dealer, who I learned, seemed quite familiar with the Abenaki Basketmakers in the area and said that this was made by the “Bernard” family of Basketmakers in Windham County. I know that the Bernards are indigenous in NW Vermont and in Quebec, so the story seemed plausible. I got in touch with Billie and she told me that the basket was used to dry raspberry leaves and other herbs (didn’t write them down) to make tea. So this is an interesting little basket that was made and used along a totally different trajectory than the mainstream cheese versions.

Basket Mold

L2024.3.120

Softwood basket mold

Bentwood Box

L2024.3.87a-b

Painted bentwood box with lid. Stitched and pegged. Lid shows evidence of painted double-scroll design, mostly worn away.

This box is an important piece of the period and shows diagnostic Northeastern Native sewn and pegged construction. It had a painted lid with double scroll design at one point, but the design is almost completely obliterated.

Bentwood Box

L2024.3.114a-b

Round, bentwood Box with lid. Basswood sides and pine pine bottom. Lid has ash splint sides and white pine top. Sides of both box and lid sewn with wood splints and pegged to top/bottom.

This large bent wood box from southern Quebec in Nulhegan Tribal Territory, is constructed from one of the widest splints taken from a tree that I have ever seen. It looks so much like an early 20th century cheese box that it sat on an antique dealer’s shelf for many months. It is beautifully made, and it seems to be of relatively recent make due to the absence of significant oxidation on the outside of the splint.

Bentwood Box

L2024.3.88a-b

Painted bentwood box with lid. Lid top made of tulip poplar and box bottom made of pine, sides of basswood with splint stitching. a. box b. lid

This is an exquisite, black-stained splint box. It is entirely standard in form and material, except for the lid top which is made from a piece of commercially surfaced tulip (Liriodendon tulipifera) wood. The basswood sides are carefully cut down to a standard thickness with numerous strokes of the crooked knife (visible in the image to the right) rather than the cabinet scraper of the Euroamerican craftsman. The top panel must have been crafted from a piece of planed wood destined for a piece of regional furniture. Also tulip reaches its northern limits in Vermont, so it an uncommon wood anyway. An interesting example.

Birchbark Box

L2024.3.83a-b

Large, round birchbark box etched/inscribed with double scroll motif on lid and rectilinear motif on body.

This large etched birch bark box from the east side of Lake Memphremagog has beautiful “double scroll” designs on the lid, a rarity in the American Abenaki area. Although the size and manufacture is similar to the much more common mid-Maine “Penobscot” bark boxes, its construction technique is more delicate and regionally distinctive.

Fish Trap

L2024.3.109

Cylindrical, ash splint device with interior woven cone.

This woven ash splint eel trap (missing the basketry cap on the far end) is only the second fish trap from the entire American Abenaki area. The other, now housed in the ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain collections in Burlington was from the Connecticut River Valley.

Fruit Basket

L2024.3.110

Woven, ash splint basket with handle. Square base with round rim.

The small basket holding about a peck would be useful for carrying a few fruits and vegetables from the garden to the kitchen. It came from the same Fairfield, VT source as the large goose down basket (L2024.3.111) and was said to have been made by the same "Indian" family. This example is important in that it is the only one with a carved bail handle that can be assigned a Vermont provenance.

Horse Feed Basket

L2024.3.177

Conical, ash-splint woven basket with wooden rim. Remains of leather straps.

This is an amazing ash-splint utility basket one of only two that Wiseman has ever seen in the antiques trade. It is designed to add feed or something nicer for the horse to eat in the bottom of the tapered subconical basket while it is tethered. There are the remains of two black leather straps that affix the basket to the horse’s harness. It is uncertain at this time whether the basket is Native-made, but the Nulhegan Tribal records show several local and itinerant Indigenous basket sellers in the area in the early 20th century, and presumably they had parents who also made and sold baskets in the Northeast Kingdom. Large, coarse primitive baskets were known to have been made by both Euro-Americans and Abenakis.

Needlework Basket

2010.2a-b

Sweetgrass sewing basket with tatted and crocheted contents. The basket has four interior features: a pincushion with green velveteen dome top (and 4 pins), a thimble holder, a scissors holder and a lidded compartment to store tiny things in (about 1.5" square and .5" deep.
This does not appear to have been colored.
The magnifying glass has two numbers scratched on it "13" and "3" It has a tiny handle. The rim and handle are a flat grey metal.

Used by Lena Caverzasi Sheridan

Pack Basket

L2024.3.175

Ash-splint pack basket with birch or maple rim

Every hunter carried his Indian pack basket into the field, and they sat in many bark and cedar & canvas canoes back in the day. Many others that I found, mostly with nailed or riveted rims retained that leather or fabric shoulder straps, but this one does not seem to ever had them, since there is no strap wear on the splints at all. I would surmise that this may have been used inside a camp or in a canoe. The distinctive loop handle allowed the basket to be slung from the stump of a tree-branch to keep some, but not all animals from finding food or other edibles.

This is the only native-made pack basket I have found that has a good far-north central Vermont provenance from Averill, VT, near the Canadian Border. It has all of the distinctive characteristics of a handmade Native style pack basket that are accepted in Maine. The spear shaped prongs that hold the loop handle to the basket rim are especially distinctive. It still has its original copper-riveted web shoulder straps.

Sewing Basket

L2024.3.101a-b

Sweetgrass basket and lid with embroidery thread and binding ribbon

Probably Odanak

Sweetgrass Bundles

L2024.3.64a-b

Two bundles of sweetgrass tied with torn strips of bedsheet

This set of sweetgrass bundles, collected by Swanton basketmakers in the early 20th century, are tied with rip-strips of cotton sheets. Swanton historian Ben Gravel said that he collected these from a Back Bay family in whose house they had hung for fifty years. They were traditionally used to sweeten the air in a home or put in drawers to keep away mustiness.

Sweetgrass Sewing Basket

L2024.3.104a-e

a & b: woven ash splint and sweetgrass round basket with lid. Varying width ash weavers and sweetgrass bundles. Lid has a raised, looped design (cowiss) and small ring handle.

c: Pin Cushion of velvet with woven ash splint base
d: Woven sweetgrass scissor case
e: Woven sweetgrass Needle case (etui)

This is a very rare piece, there are hundreds of baskets like this all over Vermont in antique shops, never with any good provenance. They could be made by Akwesasne Mohawks, Canadian Abenakis or Maine Indians, we will probably never know until a comprehensive stylistic research project can delimit tribal origins. This may not be possible. This basket was purchased from “a Local Indian family” (presumably the Lapans) by Mrs. Bell of Swanton Vermont in the early 20th century. All other Swanton-made baskets are coarse utility baskets or open work baskets without any Sweetgrass interweaving like this one. The basket depth and cowiss over weave decoration are atypical of Quebec Abenaki production. This was from the collection of Swanton Historian Ben Gravel who received the basket during the 1959 Champlain celebration.