2 Tone Button Basket w/porcupine curls! Pam Outdusis Cunningham: Penobscot

Description

A beautiful "button" basket byPam Cunningham, master Penobscot basketmaker.  This basket is made from both the nearly white outer layers of split ash wood and the darker inner layers of the same log - the heart wood.  Pam calls this her "2 tone button basket".  The basket itself is an older form, square bottom to rounded top rim with round overhanging lid.  There is a neatly wrapped round ash ring handle on the top of the lid.  The porcupine curls (also called "point" curls or simply "twists") are of the nearly white outer ash splints.  Curls are added as decorative elements.
The whiter ash and the darker heartwood alternate giving this a striped appearance...  The curls are only over the outer/whiter ash. The basket bottom has 30 "porcupine" curls. The lid has 10.   Button baskets have been made by Pam's ancestors for over 125 years.  When baskets began to be commonly used as trade and commerce items, sewing baskets were in demand.  Larger round baskets were used to hold many sewing items and sometimes smaller baskets, such as a button basket, a slightly larger ribbon basket, a thimble cover basket, a scissor cover basket, were added inside the larger basket to help keep the seamster's items organized. Button baskets vary a bit is size, this one is on the larger end ...  It is 2.5" square on the bottom, 3" in diameter at the top.  It is 2.25" high to top of basket lid and the wrapped ring handle adds another .75" to the height (making it 3" high overall)  On the basket bottom Pam has put her maker's mark, a sweet fern unfurling into a turtle - Pam is of the turtle clan and added the year.  In fifth photo of the slideshow you can see Pam's card with her sweet fern/turtle maker's mark.
This button basket is made of brown ash, the traditional material of Maine and Eastern Canadian basketmakers.
There are more of Pam's beloved basket styles in this ebay store  - you might find strawberries, pinecones, pumpkins, mini-corn, small corn, blueberries, prayer baskets....
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.