Portraits of American Basketmakers
The Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery, which includes the Luce Foundation Center for American Art, is home to a vast collection of American art, including photography, paintings, New Deal art, African American art, Latino art, modern folk art, and self-taught art.
In the Smithsonian's video A Measure of the Earth: The Cole-Ware Collection of American Baskets, we are introduced to seven basketweavers from different regions of America who use various materials to make baskets by hand, from sourcing and preparing the raw material to shaping the final item.
An American Tradition
Several of the basketmakers portrayed talk about the thought processes involved in working on their time-consuming craft – making connections to people in the past who made and used baskets, as well as connections to the future, hoping that their work will last a century or more.
We learn about the inherent characters of various plant materials, and the process that produces a unique basket when the possibilities of shape and contour are revealed through the natures of the materials.
The Basketmakers
Stephen Zeh, brown ash basketmaker
Lynette Youson, sweetgrass basketmaker
Anne McCauley, honeysuckle basketmaker
Jo Campbell-Amsler, cultured willow basketmaker
Jennifer Heller Zurick, willow bark basketmaker
Aaron Yakim and Cynthia Taylor, white oak basketmakers
For more on four types of basketmaking, read descriptions of plaiting, wicker, twining, and coiling on The Language of Native American Baskets.
· Don't miss: American Craftspeople, How to Make a Bilum Bag, and Bilum Videos.
POPULAR POSTS
 Follow a tutorial for making a patchworked bag with Sashiko topstitching. |  Follow tutorials for how to create traditional Japanese embroidery stitching. |  Explore a library's digitized vintage maps, which you can download for free. |  Learn from a museum textile curator how to best care for your quilts. |
 Learn to make a basket weave pattern quilt from scraps of fabric. |  Sisters Lorna and Jill Watt create amazing yarn bomb installations . |  Ceramic artists create fantastical structures using magnetic clay. |  Learn about a Viking fabric-making technique which pre-dates knitting. |
 Follow a tutorial for making a bilum bag - PNG's traditional fabric. |  Learn to make a pinhole camera; develop paper film with common items. |  Learn about a stretchy fabric made with connected loops. |  Free digitized knitting magazines 1800 - now. |