Description

Apache woman weaving a basket. 

The material from which a basket is made determines its design and colour, as well as which technique - plaiting, twining or coiling - is used to produce it. Fibres include stripped branches of shrubs - especially willow branches, straw, bark, grass, roots, pine needles and rushes - in fact, any strong, slender pliable vegetable fibres. These are well tended, gathered at the proper time and then peeled, shaped, aged, softened and trimmed to size, which is necessary before starting to make a basket. Yucca root yields deep red.  Sharp-thorned devil’s claw produces highly desirable brown to black for "negative designs." Willow shoots are originally white, but age through to yellow from oxidation from sun and air.

The Apache women in the American Southwest are famed for their coiled basketry. These traditional weavers fashion coiled baskets by arranging two, three or five rods of bundled grass, shoots or shredded fibres in continual spirals, much like coiled pottery. As they stitch one coil to the next, the basket spirals outwards or upwards as sides grow. This coiled technique produces hard, stiff, sturdy baskets and its stitching is a decorative element. Western Apaches, most of who live within Arizona, traditionally create baskets from three-rod coils.

(Source: https://www.medicinemangallery.com/apache-baskets-collecting-mark-sublette)