Basket w/2 tone wood & wampum color wool accents, Pam Cunningham: Penobscot

Description

Pam Outdusis Cunningham, Penobscot master basketmaker has used regular brown ash splints and slightly darker ash heartwood splints to give this basket a 2 tone striped look  - nearly white ash and darker reddish ash.  Pam has also added hand dyed purple "wampum" colored wool woven so it appears in the wider void under each of the 24 point curls on the body of this basket and also in the same voids left by the 12 smaller point curls on the lid.  Point curls are also called "twists" and "porcupine curls" by various basketmakers currently working.
This lovely round globular shaped basket is 3.5" to the rim of the basket - the points on the lid add another 1/2" to the height.  It is 4" in diameter at the center of the basket. 3" 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 placed a wrapped ring handle on the lid, this is .75" in diameter
Pam has put her maker's mark, a sweetfern unfurling into a turtle on the bottom of the basket, she has signed it "Pamela Cunningham" and she has dated it as well.  - Pam is of the Penobscot turtle clan.
Recently Pam has been exploring wool, felted wool, dying wool, wool rugs, etc.  Her beautiful purple "wampum" wool used in this basket has been hand-dyed by Pam.
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 ssipsis'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.