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THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, BOSTON, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1925

Household Arts, Crafts and Decoration

Two Indian Artists Who Make Pomo Baskets

In the mountains of northwestern California live William and Mary, two remarkable basket makers who are carrying on the ancient cart of their people, the Pomo Indians, who have produced some of the finest and most beautiful basketry ever made.  Not many of these skilled Indian craftsmen have persisted in the art of basket weaving, which their ancestors developed to a degree of beauty and perfection that has never been surpassed.  The products of this industrious couple have brought high prices from collectors.

Miss Grace Nicholson, a Pasadena art dealer and connoisseur, has done much to foster the skill of William and Mary.  Indeed, she has made it possible for the artists to continue their work and to keep it at the highest point of perfection.  It took Mary six years to make one of the small, exquisitely woven baskets in Miss Nicholson's collection.  At the collector's request, she made the basket twice as fine as she had been accustomed to weave and she received twice as much money in payment.  The plan became a permanent arrangement.  For baskets twice as fine as the ordinary ones Miss Nicholson paid Mary and her husband twice as much. She also provided them with money to live on, so that the basket makers could work patiently away at their mountain cabin, gathering fibers, sorting, splitting and scraping them for the delicate task of weaving.  They have been saved from the temptations to speed up the processes and to cheapen and commercialize their wares, a temptation which has led to the deterioration of much of Indian art.

The Materials and Their Preparation
All Pomo baskets are made on a framework of slender willow shoots and, except for the coarser baskets called "shakans," these shoots are peeled and cured carefully.  The Pomos call the willow shoots 'bam," and apply the name to various basskets.  "Bam-tush" means evenly woven and "bam-shibu" means three bams.  The willow tree is "bam-kelle" or bam tree.

The thread is obtained from the bark of shrubs and the roots of various trees and grasses and is woven over the framework of bams.   A sedge with slender, grassy leaves and a long running root grows in most soil in the Pomo country.  The basket makers split the tough roots with their teeth, coil them in bundles and dry them.  This fiber is a pale cream color when cured but it deepens with age into the rich brown that is so beautiful in old Pomo baskets.  "Tsu-wish" is the Indian name for the brown root of a grass-like plant that is very important in Pomo basketry.  The color is deepened by placing the roots in a mixture of mud, ashes and charcoal for  from one to three days.  The best of the fiber is then nearly [[cut off word]] bausted his ingenuity in weaves and shapes, and he wove into it his mythology.  He copies nature in the decorative designs and lavished the richest treasures of the hunt, together with his precious money and the brightest abalone shells from distant seashores, on the gift basket which marked the culmination of his art.  Gift baskets were the owner's proudest possessions and the envy of his friends.  They were given to visitors or at weddings as the highest possible token of esteem.
 
Protected by their isolation, the Pomos worked out their art ideas undisturbed.  As Carl Purdy observes:  "With every incentive for excellence they had reached a height in basketry when the Americans first disturbed them which has never been equaled, not only by no other Indian tribe but by no other people in the world of any age.  These stolid Indian women have a knowledge of materials and their preparation, a delicacy of touch, an artistic conception of symmetry of form and design, a versatility in the varying and inventing beautiful designs, and an eye for color which place their work on a high plane of art.  They alone of all races adorn their baskets with feathers."

With their materials ready for use, the basket makers require few tools.  A very sharp knife, an awl, and a dish to hold water are all that they use.  In primitive days the knife was of obsidian or "bottle rock," fastened to a handle with sinew and the awl was a small bone from the deer's leg.  No model, no pattern in design, guides the hand of the weaver.

Pomos decorate many of their finer baskets with the polished bits of abalone shell that served as money, and with various bird feathers.  With the advent of the white man beads were sold to the Indians and naturally found a place in basket ornamentation.

It should be remembered that the Indian baskets are no plaited, as are those of most races, but woven.  The willow bams are the warp and the fiber thread is woof.  There are said to be 11 different Pomo weaves.  Feathers are caught, one at a time, into the firm, water-tight weaving, and form a velvety surface over the outside of the treasured gift bowls.  The feather basket represents an infinite amount of skill and care and patience.

While fine weaving was done at the various California missions in the days of Spanish supremacy, the finest and most beautiful baskets were made by the independent weavers living, Indian fashion, free and undirected in their ancestral mountain or valley homes.  So when the Spanish padres wanted a particularly handsome basket to be given to the King, to some other royal personage or a high church official they sent to one of these remote native weavers outside the mission.  The best of the surviving specimens of ancient basketry come from such untrammeled Indian craftsmen rather than from those who worked under the dominance of the padres.

It is this achievement of the weaver's art that has been perpetuated by the skill of William and Mary.  "The greatest basket makers that ever lived," declares an authority on basketry.  "No finer baskets have ever been made," says another.  And so the artists work in their lonely mountain home.  Gentle, patient, wise in the matter of warp and woof and traditional forms and designs, delighting in the craft for the craft's sake, William and Mary and carrying on.

[[2 photos captioned]]
Photographs by Grace Nicholson

William and Mary His Wife, Two Pomo Indians, Carrying on Now the Most Glorious Traditions of Their People as Basket Weavers.  By Some Authorities William and Mary Are Considered the Greatest Basket Makers That Have Ever Lived.