Miniature Flower Basket 2"- perfect! Pam Outdusis Cunningham: Penobscot

Description

At only 2" high and 2" long this miniature flower basket by Pam outdusis Cunningham, master Penobscot basketmaker is an amazing feat of technical excellence.  Pam has included stems of handmade, hand-cut & hand-dyed wool "lavender" flowers.  Pam has been exploring wool dying and felting.
An uncommon form, flower baskets of this shape were made by Pam's Penobscot ancestors and other
Wabanaki
basketmakers c/1880-1920.  These flower baskets were meant to be carried to the flower garden and place cut flowers in and were popular with Victorian era women.  You may vintage drawings and photos of women in gardens wearing long dresses, fancy hats and a "flower basket" filled with long stemmed irises, tulips, gladiolas, roses etc.
These baskets were large and were oval shaped with a sort of fold (shaped sort of like a hard taco shell)  and a handle that could fit over your arm.  I have seen less than 10 of these
Miniatures are more difficult to make than full size baskets.  Only skilled, experienced basketmakers can make a true miniature that has the shape and detail of the larger piece it is miniaturizing.  This particular miniature flower basket is the smallest one I have seen - and it is a tiny work of art!  With the 3 stems of lavender wool flowers - it will look gorgeous anywhere you place it.  -----  Do you or a friend have a Victorian era doll house?  -  I am picturing this in such a dollhouse.  -  I can also see it in a small display case alongside delicate porcelain cups or figurines.
Here Pam has scaled this basket perfectly - it is as elegant and whimsical as the full size victorian era Wabanaki made flower baskets of over 100 years ago.
This is 2" to top of basket handle, 2" long and the sides are curve up 1/2".  On the bottom Pam has added the date and put her maker's mark, a sweet fern unfurling into a turtle - 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... sweetgrass is held in place by a perfect X shape ash splint wrap and there is a X rim wrap around the basket handle.
With this miniature basket, Pam has included miniature lavender flowers she has made of hand dyed wool -
Second to last photo is of Pam dancing the Shawl Dance at the 2019 Penobscot Nation Community Day 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, strawberry baskets or prayer baskets.
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Wabanaki
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A confederacy of 5 tribes who reside/resided in Maine, Vermont and Eastern Canada - Among them Pam's tribe - the Penobscot ...... And the Abenaki, Maliseet, MicMac & Passamaquoddy.