Owl Basket w/heart sweetgrass prayer braid by Pam Outdusis Cunningham: Penobscot

Description

This "Owl basket" is great little round basket by Pam oudusis Cunningham, Penobscot basket maker.  Pam has enclosed/curled a prayer braid in this basket, with a heart shape at one end.  Pam hopes that the basket will be used for someone in need of love or healing.   Owls have always held a special place in Pam's heart.  They are honored birds in Penobscot lore and when her son Jacob was small Pam and he found an small owl.  Jacob drew it's picture and later they wrote a children's story about the owl. See the big owl eyes and it's owl beak? Here she Pam made her owl basket in an old style form - the square bottom to round top basket.  This form results in a "cat head" shape (turn it upside down and the corners are the cat's ears with the rounded dip between them)
This owl basket by Pam is 2.25" high, 3.5" diameter at top. 2.75" square on the bottom- and the heart/sweetgrass bundle is 27" long when uncurled.   On the bottom Pam has signed her name and put her maker's mark, a sweetfern unfurling into a turtle - Pam is of the turtle clan.  She has also written "Penobscot Nation"
Made of brown ash, the traditional material of Maine and Eastern Canadian basketmakers, this has plain tidal sweetgrass wrapping the rim of the basket.  The enclosed tidal sweetgrass braid has a heart at the end.  This can be cut and the cuttings used for ceremonial smudging.  (ask me for more info on this if you might want to try smudging but don't know how)
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, holiday tree baskets or prayer baskets.