Highlighted Designs: |
Here are some common designs used throughout utilitarian, fancy, and trade baskets. The names of the designs are not universal, and where we could we included the original terms in the indigenous language. These are not hard and fast definitions of what the design names are, and these differ across tribal, village, family terms and across time.
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Snake's Nose Design: “Karok women told the story of the Snake who watched the old time weavers use many isosceles triangles in their baskets. When he saw the design was a favorite he said, “Here is my nose for a basket mark.”…The stories are amusing to the tellers. [Lizzie Hickox] explained that a triangular mark need not really look like or represent a snake nose; it is just called that.” (p. 74, Yurok-Karok Basket Weavers, O'Neale)
Snake’s Nose design can be a combination of, or a single triangle mark on a basket. It is seen across basket types from utilitarian to ones with lavish overlay materials. |
Obsidian Blade Design: This older design is a direct reference to the Obsidian dance blades used in ceremonies, as well as the personal blades kept as a pocket knife.
The newer form of the design at its most basic is a parallelogram. At times it can be rotated, as seen in this small cooking basket made for trade. Or seen on caps or trade baskets with added details like worm trail or other design elements internally. |
Frog's Hand Design: In local stories, much like the story related about Snake’s nose ending up on baskets as a design, other animals lent their forms to designs. Frog appears in numerous stories across the tribes in the area.
In a Yurok frog story, it tells of Frog (a woman) instituting a healing for a sick child who had taken care of Frog earlier. The Frog’s Hand Design marks where she put her hands and where others should also on a basket during the healing ceremony. Similar variations of this design are also referred to as “Many Feet” design. |
House Ladder Design: A common design known as eeníkvit in Karuk, lit. “Lumber Cut” Sometimes also referred to as Cut Wood.
Today the design is sometimes referred to in English as “stairway to heaven”. This, along with some other English translations moves away from the original language descriptions. Within local indigenous worldviews and spirituality there isn’t a necessarily a conception of heaven/hell. There is a notion of an afterlife where one joins all the ancestors/spirit people who are all dancing in an ongoing World Renewal ceremony. |
Friendship Design
‘Apxankuykuy (Karuk) Wax’poo (Yurok) Ch'ah-wilchwe:n (Hupa, [lit., ch'ah-made into] “Friendship” is a modern English language translation of this design. It is referred to as Friendship due to the unbroken, continuous quality. Generally is made up of parallelograms and triangles. In some texts this patterning is referred to as Obsidian Blade with Snake’s Nose design. |
Grizzly Bear's Paw Design: This design is more traditionally known as Sharp-Tooth with the angled points that flank either side of the parallelogram. It has been better known as Grizzly Bear Paw due to the translation from Hupa, Mikyowe'-mila' [literally, grizzly bear-its paw]. This design is seen across Fancy Caps, trinket baskets, gambling trays. A fantastic example of Grizzly Bear Paw on a gambling tray woven by Nettie Ruben can be seen in the bottom left of Hover Case in Nealis Hall.
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Suspender Slide Design:
This design has been noted in O’Neale’s interviews as a new design. A woman from the Ko’otep district wove the shape of the metal slide from her son’s suspenders into her basket. Other weavers interviewed by O’Neale stated they invented the design, or it was an already accepted modification of Friendship design. |
Centipede Design: This design differs from Grizzly Bear Paw and Stacked Wood/Obsidian Blade with House ladder. The ending points are connected by a thin line to the main motif. This design is most often seen on baskets made for the trade or gambling trays.
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Crab Claw Design: A mark that used to be common pre-1900, “Crab, his hand”, is a point of interest as some O’Neale interviewed regarded the design as a new invention, taken from linoleum prints or quilt patterns. While others with longer memories regarded it as an older traditional design.
Designs as Marks, Symbols, and Positives:
Basket designs are regarded as being a part of the basket. The words originally were referred to as marks, as the best English translation. Mark as a noun and a verb: “She saw a mark she recognized”; and “She marked her basket as she wove”. The design is in the basket, not on the baskets surface.
Though the designs have symbolic names, they do not always have symbolic meanings or significance. Weavers, when interviewed by O’Neale, were hard pressed to put down any mysterious meaning to designs.
Within designs in baskets, designs are regarded as being the positive of the image rather than the spaces in-between, or negative space. This distinction grows hazy as we enter into the made for the trade period where innovative weaving styles became more commonplace.
Basket designs are regarded as being a part of the basket. The words originally were referred to as marks, as the best English translation. Mark as a noun and a verb: “She saw a mark she recognized”; and “She marked her basket as she wove”. The design is in the basket, not on the baskets surface.
Though the designs have symbolic names, they do not always have symbolic meanings or significance. Weavers, when interviewed by O’Neale, were hard pressed to put down any mysterious meaning to designs.
Within designs in baskets, designs are regarded as being the positive of the image rather than the spaces in-between, or negative space. This distinction grows hazy as we enter into the made for the trade period where innovative weaving styles became more commonplace.