The Basketmaker

May 6, 2019 9:43 AM

Through the practice and poetry of basketmaking, lives, cultures, and generations intertwine.

Along a path hemmed by sword ferns and salal bushes, Ed Carriere leads me to a felled red cedar log in a forest. Rotting chunks of wood, broken off the log, stain the earth a deep ocher color. This is the perfect place for us—me and archaeologist Dale Croes—to collect roots for weaving my first basket. As one of the world’s last Suquamish basketmakers, Carriere is going to show us how.

posted by poffin boffin (4 comments total)

Native people in my area still make baskets. I have been so fortunate to go to some workshops and learn a little.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:11 AM on May 6, 2019

Carriere holds the root in his meaty hands—hands that have woven over 600 baskets, hands that dynamited apart a granite boulder to build a stone fireplace, hands that carved a canoe from a gigantic cedar, and fought an elephant seal off that canoe when the seal attacked it

Basically, respect those hands!
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:41 AM on May 6, 2019 [3 favorites]

Great article and a good companion to this short film I happened to catch the other day.
posted by HumanComplex at 11:25 AM on May 6, 2019

“The world is truly riddled with baskets,” writes Willeke Wendrich in The World According to Basketry. “Once you have lost your innocence, you cannot stop noticing them.”

This is a great article, thanks for sharing, and it's nice to see you back!
posted by ITheCosmos at 1:51 PM on May 6, 2019 [2 favorites]