Basket ID

I'm struggling to identify this basket. What piqued my interest was the rod foundation (as opposed to grass). Willow, maybe?

Thanks for any help.

Measures 11.5" wide x 5" tall (29.5 x 12.5 cm); found in Portland, Oregon

 

There's a lot left to love, Potts...very attractive!

 

Thanks, Whit!

 

I don't immediately recognize it, but I don't think it is Native American.



The rod looks more like rattan than willow, based on the striations and fraying. If you look at the cross section of the rod using a magnifier, can you see evenly distributed pores, or rings? Pores = rattan. Rings = willow, or some other woody material.

The stitching looks relatively soft, like a palm leaf or grass.

 

Thanks for the observations.

Here's some closer-ups of cross-sections. I think you may be right in it not being willow. But it doesn't look like the cross-sections of rattan I'm seeing online.... ?

 

Hard to tell. It looks rather degraded. But it might be some other sort of vine or root. Nice photos, btw.

 

I don't recognize it.......

 

Can you post a view of the side of the basket, so I can see the shape of its "profile"? I have a theory about it, but can't prove it yet.

 

I like the sound of that! Thanks for thinking about it.

Here's the profile:

 

My gut feeling is that it is African, from somewhere in the south eastern region (Zambia to South Africa), but I am having trouble finding well identified examples with this combination of features. Here is my thinking so far - the overall form (flaring cone on a small base) is very typical of baskets from this region, as is the design of simple rings of color. Both single rod coiling, and the style of stitching, alternating over two rows, also occur in the area. But I am having trouble finding the combination of single rod foundation stitched with a soft leaf or grass material as appears in your basket.

The Barotse/Lozi in Zambia are known for their sturdy baskets made of makenge root (Combretum zeyheri). These use a single rod foundation, but the coils are stitched with the same root split into strands. The material is hard and glossy, with little pits that are left from the subsidiary hair roots.

Some Barotse bowls/plates -

from: African Basketry: Grassroots Art from Southern Africa, by Anthony Cunningham and M. Elizabeth Terry. pg 55

A detail of a Barotse basket, showing the appearance of the makenge root:

from: Art of the Basket: Traditional Basketry from Around the World. by Bryan Sentance.

Here are a couple other types that show some similarities, but the examples I have found are not illustrated with enough detail to be certain about their structures -

A Gembe-Tonga basket, also from Zambia, made of reeds (Phragmites australis) and leaf fibers (Hyphaene petersiana):

from: African Basketry: Grassroots Art from Southern Africa, by Anthony Cunningham and M. Elizabeth Terry. pg 75

And some Tsonga baskets from the area near Giyani in South Africa, made using a vine (Cocculus hirsutus) as the coil foundation. The stitching material is not identified. The rim treatment is clearly different from your basket:

from: African Basketry: Grassroots Art from Southern Africa, by Anthony Cunningham and M. Elizabeth Terry. pg 32


from: African Basketry: Grassroots Art from Southern Africa, by Anthony Cunningham and M. Elizabeth Terry. pg 164

 

from: Art of the Basket: Traditional Basketry from Around the World. by Bryan Sentance.

I don't leave home without it !!!!!!

 

Well, thanks first and foremost. I so appreciate your time and expertise.

After spending some time trying to search the different types you mention here, I'm afraid none sound or look just right.

The Barotse baskets, as below, don't quite look like the right stitching material. I think you're right that the material on my mine looks (and feels) more like a grass or quick-growing, flexible fiber, and less like a hardened more woody root.





Gembe-Tonga also seems like not quite the right materials...

Your last idea, Tsonga baskets, seem most promising, but are a bit limited in examples online. So I can't be sure.

AI keeps wanting to tell me it's Makenge:





... but those design patterns in raised 'relief' are not on my basket.


Maybe mine is 1000 years old, was almost perfectly preserved in a climate-controlled desert cave, avoiding sunlight, moisture and temperature extremes, and actually originates in a heretofore unknown culture.

Not sure, though, how I would've found it in a thrift store in Portland, Oregon, in that case.

Anyway, I keep at it. Thanks again!

 

Yeah, I am not happy with the comparisons I have been able to find either. I haven't found any Tsonga baskets in the online museum collections that I usually check. There is a lot about African basketry that has not been documented, or only in obscure journals. I have ordered one from the South African Museum that is supposed to be the definitive source for technical info on baskets from the region. I will let you know what I find when it gets here.

 

Awesome. Thank you. What's one more book, right?

 

Always happy to have an excuse to add to the collection.

 

'

 

there is though, a resemblance .......