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Nixon Era Chinese Prisoner Nesting Baskets This is NOT a Native American Basket !! This is NOT a Sweetgrass Basket !!
This type of basket is made in
China of a common grass that grows there and is exported/imported around the world by the hundreds of thousands. They
have become a type of virus that has infected the basket collecting world. They
were/are sold in nesting sets of round, oval, square, hexagonal and octagonal shapes in
natural and several colors (Christmas colors are popular). It was one of the
first items to flood this country when trade opened with China in the Nixon Era.
I Repeat These are NOT Native American Baskets !! These are NOT Sweetgrass Baskets !!
It has been said that this type of hand crafts are created in what amount to
slave labor camps, therefore they are often referred to as CHINESE PRISONER
BASKETS Read what a seller from eBay has to say on this subject
On the other hand.... American basketmakers historically have and still do use three different types of plant commonly known as Sweetgrass. Southeastern Sweetgrass basket making has been part of the Charleston and Mt. Pleasant South Carolina Low Country communities for generations. African American basketmakers there make Gullah style coiled sweetgrass baskets with Muhlenbergia filipes, pine needles and palmetto. Indigenous peoples in the Northwest used a different type of plant commonly known as sweetgrass (Scirpus americanus) in combination with other native plant materials such as cedar and spruce root. Northeastern Native American groups used a different plant commonly known as sweetgrass (Hierochlöe odorata) in combination with Black Ash woodsplint for their basketry. This IS where you can get historic and current Maine
Indian sweetgrass baskets
Now that you know what is and what is not a sweetgrass basket..... PASS IT ON The basket collecting world will thank you for it.
Is
This Basket a Fake? Plus how to report violations of The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-644).
I will be adding to this
section as time allows. More Basket Collecting
Come and Join
in the BasketMakers
Forum. Lots of friendly basketweavers are gathered there. Click
on "Guest"
to enter and read-only or join if you want to post (it's free).
Copyright © 1998-2007 Susi Nuss. All rights reserved.
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