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Native American Basketry of the Seneca and Tlingi
Edited by Richard Schneider

      The original inhabitants of North America practiced a number of basketmaking skills, many of which have become quite rare today as the eldery practitioners find fewer and fewer apprentices to continue these traditional crafts. Although baskety remains popular in the Southwest where the craft flourishes undiminished to the present day, much of basketmaking in the northern United States and Canada has disappeared, and fewer and fewer contemporary examples find their way to trading posts and other dealers.

      Splint baskets, formed by plaiting flat strips which are tediously harvested from the indigenous black ash tree of the Great Lakes and New England regions, appears to be disapperaing with the present generation of craftswomen. Lismer's account of the Senecas of New York state, a representative group fifty years ago, remains basically unchanged in techniques and procedures today. On the opposite side of the continent, split and peeled spruce roots of the Pacific Northwest are still used by some Tlingits who laboriously twine these with incredibly fine detail into modestly sized soft baskets, today more prized as works of art than for their functional values.

      This book includes the complete 1941 edition of "Senece Splint Basketry" by Marjorie Lismer, consisting of 40 pages with 15 phtotgraphic plates, 11 line drawings, and 2 maps. It also includes the complete 1944 edition of "Spruce Root Basketry of the Alaskan Tingit" by Frances Paul, which contains 80 pages with 36 photographic plates, 13 line drawings, 60 authentic designs, and one map.Paperback, 80 pages.