Small Button Basket; Natural & Green, Pam Cunningham: Penobscot

Description

Pam Outdusis Cunningham, Penobscot master basketmaker has used natural brown ash splints and green dyed ash splints to give this basket a cheery striped look.   The porcupine curls (or point curls as some call them) at the basket top and bottom are also dyed green
This lovely round globular shaped basket is 2.25" to the rim of the basket - the ash splint wrapped ring handle adds another 1/2" to the height.  It is 2.5" in diameter at the center of the basket. 1.75" in diameter at top opening/lid and bottom.  The basket stands on the bottom downward pointing curls. Another basketmaker calls these "basket feet".
Pam has put her maker's mark, a sweetfern unfurling into a turtle on the bottom of the basket and she has dated it as well.  - Pam is of the Penobscot turtle clan.
Made of brown ash, the traditional material of Maine and Eastern Canadian basketmakers, this has plain tidal sweetgrass wrapping the rim of the basket and the basket lid rim as well.
Second to last photo is of Pam dancing the shawl dance, at the 2018 Penobscot Nation Festival.   Last photo is a pic of Pam's great-grandmother, ssipsis, selling her baskets about 1920.  To make some of her basket forms Pam uses some of her great-grandmother's basket making tools - gauges, crooked knives and wooden molds.    Be sure to view some of Pam's other baskets in this ebay store - you might find pumpkins, corn, strawberries, blueberries, pinecones or prayer baskets.