Early Twentieth Century Navajo Basket [SOLD]

Navajo baskets or Ts’aa’ have a number of uses. They are used ceremonially to hold prayer sticks and medicine bundles, because it is taboo for ritual objects to touch the ground. They are important for Kinaalda’ ceremonies, the coming of age ceremony for young women at puberty, where they are used to hold yucca suds for ritual baths and hair washing of the young woman. They are used in wedding ceremonies to hold corn pollen and food.

The designs in the Native American Baskets have significance and, depending on the interpretation, can symbolize the creation myth, life’s journeys or be a map of the Navajo cosmos. The simplest interpretation is that the center is the emergence area, or area of birth. The black coils represent clouds or four sacred mountains. The reddish bands are the sun’s rays, which bring life.  There is always a line from the center of the basket to the outer rim, a path from the center for its spirit to come and go. The pathway meets at the outer edge where the weaver stopped coiling, a clue for the medicine man who can run his fingers around the edge of the basket to determine the pathway line, a line that points east during ceremonies.

This basket dates from about the 1920s. Time has given it a beautiful patina; the reds and blacks are still visible but use has faded the colors. The herringbone pattern outer edge is unbroken. All traditional Navajo basket bowls have a herringbone weave. This basket is a piece that has been loved and used for almost 100 years.

The hole in the center of the basket is traditionally filled with a piece of fabric to prevent sacred cornmeal from falling through during a ceremony.  A past owner has placed a button, made from a very old U. S. quarter coin, in the hole to permit hanging the basket on a wall.

Condition: this Early Twentieth Century Navajo Basket in in very good condition for its age.

Provenance: from a gentleman in Albuquerque

Recommended Reading: Navajo Ceremonial Baskets: Sacred Symbols Sacred Space by Georgiana Simpson