Pocket prayer basket/turtle & medicine bundle-Pam outdusis Cunningham: Penobscot

Description

A "Pocket Prayer" basket by Pam oudusis Cunningham, Penobscot basket maker.  Pam has enclosed/curled a prayer braid and a medicine bundle in this basket and added a green dyed turtle of ash splints to the exterior front of the baske.  The rim is wrapped with tidal sweetgrass and secured with a thin ash splint in a neat X wrap.  Pam has made this prayer 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).    - Pam has made a tiny basket to take with you everywhere with all you need for your prayers to the creator.  The turtle on the exterior is of dyed green ash splint cut to make a turtle shape and secured by weaving it on to the exterior of the basket with plain tidal sweetgrass weavers.  Pam is of the Penobscot turtle clan.
This pocket prayer basket by Pam is 1.25" high, 1.5" diameter at top. 1.5" square on the bottom- and the leather wrapped bundle is about 1" square and 1/2" thick.   On the bottom Pam has put her maker's mark, a sweetfern unfurling into a turtle - Pam is of the turtle clan.  She has also written the date.
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 is coiled and tied.  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).  The medicine bundle is sacred cedar, sweetgrass and tobacco wrapped in native tanned deer hide and secured with a thin thread.
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.