Twined. Woman’s "fancy" dress cap. Design is triangle - like mass with steps and projections. Tags "Klamath R. Tribes att." Glued in several areas. Per Ralph Shanks: Twined woman's basket hat. Crossed warp starting knot, slightly indented. The warp material is probably willow. The weft material is conifer root. The weft overlay design has a beargrass background with maidenhair fern designs. Starting at the starting knot, there is three strand twining for 3/4 inch, followed by 1 inch of plain twining, followed by one weft row of three strand twining. Plain twining continues to 1/2 inch below the rim where there is one weft row of three strand twining. The rim is trimmed. The main design is three sets of two stacked, stepped parallelograms with a diagonal slash of stacked triangles through their centers. The basket has a rightward work direction, with an up to the right slant of weft twist. The workface is on the exterior. The overlay is single-sided, with the design on the exterior. The basket is from Northwestern California.
Donor:
Elsa Leigh
Collection place:
Northwestern California
Verbatim coll. place:
California
Culture or time period:
Northwestern California tribes
Collector:
Maternal Uncle of Mrs. Elsa Leigh
Collection date:
unknown
Object type:
ethnography
Object class:
Basketry (object genre), Caps (headgear), and Twined weaving
Function:
2.4 Fine Clothes and Accoutrements not used exclusively for status or religious purposes