Western Apache Burden Basket [SOLD]

According to Clara Lee Tanner, "Western Apache burden baskets almost always carried distinctive styles of decoration from colored bands woven into or painted on the vessel wall to buckskin and tin tinkler additions.  The wall decoration consisted of two or more horizontal encircling bands, usually black, or red, or red and black, and generally of woven design, very rarely, purple, red, green or orange was painted on the finished piece. 

"Burden baskets of the Western Apaches were characteristically decorated with buckskin in the form of a bottom patch and four vertical bands along the wall of the vessel, with longer or shorter thongs along both and sometimes between bands at the rim.  Thongs often terminated in tinklers cut from cans and rolled into cone shapes."

This Apache burden basket follows closely to the descriptions provided by Tanner.  The three bands of decoration include human figures holding hands in the upper and lower of the bands and eagles in the center band. The rawhide decorations follow the form specified and the tin tinklers are all intact.

Condition: The basket is in original excellent condition.

Provenance:  ex. coll. Frances Sonnenberg, Santa Fe resident.

Reference: Apache Indian Baskets by Clara Lee Tanner.