Finely Coiled Lidded grass basket
Eskimo
Hopper Bay, Alaska
Beach grass and dyed beach grass
1960s
7 inches Height x 4 inches in Diameter
This is a vintage Eskimo basket from Hopper Bay, Alaska made in the 1960s.
Far to the west along the shores of Alaska’s Bering Sea grows a tough pliable beach grass. Eskimo women carefully select these grasses in late summer, cure and bleach them, and during the winter and spring months, design and weave their coiled basketry.
The patterns are worked into the basketry by using dyed grass and sometimes dyed seal gut. For the color, willow and alder bark and berries were utilized by the basket weaver.
