Cleveland Museum of Art

Jar-shaped Basket

Sarah Hunter

Date

1910

Medium

Willow, bulrush; coiled (3 rods)

Culture

Native North America, Great Basin, California, Death Valley

Department

Art of the Americas

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Sarah Hunter’s basketry is noted for geometricized motifs reminiscent of the animals depicted in petroglyphs on canyon walls in the Death Valley region. Here they include pronghorn mountain sheep, deer, and birds, along with humans, all created in light-brown bulrush against a honey-colored willow ground. Traditional Indigenous basket weavers, who have exhaustive knowledge of the plant world, tend, harvest, and prepare their own materials. If stages of the process are not done properly and at the right time, color will be uneven and stitches will twist and split. Some Timbisha Shoshone women continue traditions of basket weaving to the present day.

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