1 of 2- Native Pine Needle Basket? Has some age.

Just got 2 baskets, this one looks to be a pine needle and is Southern U.S.? Just my guess. Please note the colored design, are pine needles dyed? Has an older floral cloth liner sewn into the bottom (it is rigid), perhaps that will help date it or say which tribe made it? The weaving seems pretty tight. Measures about 9" in diameter at the widest part of the middle. What do think? Thanks in advance.

 

I don't see native
don't see pine needle..




BUT...if it is pine needle , it has dried out to a point that I no longer recognize the fibre ....

 

Looks like it might be raffia / palm fiber. Those colors on the bottom are not part of any NA tradition that I know of.

 

I agree that the coil material used in your basket does not look like pine needles. It looks more like a grass that has dried out and fractured. It is also difficult to identify the stitching material, but it might be dyed raffia, as Pottery suggests. The material used on the outside of the bottom looks like some type of commercially woven matting.

The method of construction looks similar to Seminole coiled baskets, which often start with a solid base made from a circle of cardboard covered with palmetto fiber. However, I have not seen an example that used a printed fabric or matting like in your basket. In Seminole baskets, the material used for the coils is a type of "sweetgrass", but pine needles might also be used. The stitching material of choice has been commercial thread (crochet or embroidery thread) in a variety of colors. Raffia, which is an imported material, has not been a typical material used in their baskets. It is more associated with pine needle baskets made by non-Natives.

However, there is an example of a Seminole basket in the National Museum of the American Indian that shows some features similar to yours. It is described in the records as being made of grass and raffia. (I actually think the coil material looks like pine needles, but the stitching does look like raffia.) Although there is not a view of the bottom of the basket, I think I can see a solid palmetto bottom peaking out, but I can't be sure -

https://americanindian.si.edu/collections-search/object/NMAI_215825



So, in the case of your basket, the use of grass as the coiling material might suggest a Native weaver. But the materials used in the base and the stitching would lean more toward a non-Native. There are probably too many variables, and overlapping Native and non-Native traditions, to find a definitive answer as to who made your basket. As for a date, based on the fabric and its similarity to the NMAI basket, I would place it in the 1930s-40s.