Western Apache Deep Basketry Bowl [SOLD]

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Once Known Native American Weaver
  • Category: Bowls and Other Forms
  • Origin: Apache, American Indians
  • Medium: willow, mulberry, devil’s claw
  • Size: 4” deep x 9-¾” diameter
  • Item # C4206C
  • SOLD

This Western Apache basketry bowl is visually stunning. Such exquisite baskets are no longer being made by the Apache women as they were unable, after the 1920s, to sell them for enough to compensate them for their labor. It is now a lost art. It is of single-rod construction with alternating black and yellow rows of rectangular bars. The yellow is mulberry and the black is devil's claw.

Western Apache basketry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the best basketry of the Southwestern tribes and they are treasured by museums and collectors.  The Western Apaches were not a single tribe but consisted of five separate and completely independent tribes—the Cibecue, San Carlos, White Mountain, and Northern and Southern Tonto.  They are now considered collectively as Western Apache.

The process of basket weaving was coiling the weft material (visible) over the heavier rod foundation (concealed) or warp of the basket.  Designs were created to the likeness of the maker or, more likely, to the limit of the maker’s talent and allotted time.

Willow was the most common material used for the warp or foundation.  Devil’s claw was favored for the black decoration and Mulberry was a favored material for the weft or the visible stitch material.  These materials had to be collected at the appropriate season, dried or processed at the appropriate time, and then the basket construction could begin.  The whole process was time consuming and laborious so it is no surprise that the women quit making them when they could not sell them for more than two dollars or so.

It is rare to find a basketry bowl of this quality and condition still available on the market.  It was fortunately well taken care of. It appears to be circa 1900-1910.


Condition: this Western Apache Deep Basketry Bowl is structurally in excellent condition

Provenance: from a gentleman in Colorado who inherited it from his parents.  He stated “ My grandfather, born in the 1880s, had a business in Durango. He bought Navajo rugs, pots and baskets to decorate his cabin.”

Recommended Reading: Southwestern Indian Baskets: Their History and Their Makers by Andrew Whiteford

Relative Links: Native American Baskets, Apache

Western Apache Deep Basketry Bowl

 


Once Known Native American Weaver
  • Category: Bowls and Other Forms
  • Origin: Apache, American Indians
  • Medium: willow, mulberry, devil’s claw
  • Size: 4” deep x 9-¾” diameter
  • Item # C4206C
  • SOLD

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