Braided Sweetgrass and Pounded Ash

Picking up a basket made from sweetgrass and ash is a sensorial experience. Silky ash runs smoothly through your fingertips while the aroma of sweetgrass fills the air. Some whimsical baskets in the shape of berries and corn might tempt you to taste the work, too. To make these, basket makers dye their ash splints or use the wood's natural color to make fancy baskets with curls and points that mimic the seeds of a strawberry or the drupes of a blackberry.

Clara Neptune Keezer (Passamaquoddy Tribe at Sipayik [or Pleasant Point], Maine, 1931-2016), Blueberry Basket, ca. 2008, 6 ½ x 4 ¼ inches, dyed and natural brown ash, sweetgrass. Museums Collections, Museums Collections, Gift of Leslie & Virginia Tronzo.

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Clara Neptune Keezer (Passamaquoddy Tribe at Sipayik [or Pleasant Point]) was well-known for her fruit and vegetable baskets like the blueberry basket shown here. Keezer was born on the Passamaquoddy Reservation at Sipayik (also called Pleasant Point) in 1930, a time when most of her relatives were engaged in making baskets. She spent much of her childhood with her grandparents, who taught her how to make baskets at the age of eight. As an adult, she witnessed the gradual decline of the art form before becoming one of the founding members of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA) in 1993.^[1] Since then, she has taught more than three dozen apprentices through MIBA and the Maine Arts Commission. In 2002, she was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).^[2] Her expertise is visible in the beautiful, tight whorls that decorate this basket. Every August, the Passamaquoddy at Sipayik harvest sahtiyil (wild blueberries) in sun-soaked barrens. Harvesters comb the berries from bushes using hand rakes, as they have for millennia.^[3] Keezer dyed her ash a rich shade of purple to match these berries before working the splints into the basket’s tapered, round shape. Carefully carved and shaped leaves dyed green spread out from the lid’s handle, while bright strands of sweetgrass wrapped around the rim show where the lid meets the body of the basket.

Rocky Keezer (Passamaquoddy Tribe at Sipayik [or Pleasant Point], Maine, b. 1969), Ear of Corn Lidded Basket, ca. 2008, 8 ¼ x 3 inches, dyed and natural brown ash, sweetgrass. Museums Collections, Museums Collections, Gift of Leslie & Virginia Tronzo.

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Two of Clara Neptune Keezer’s apprentices were her sons, Rocky and Kenny Keezer (both Passamaquoddy at Sipahik [or Pleasant Point]). She taught them how to make vegetable and fruit baskets, like these two corn baskets by Rocky Keezer. The Wabanaki honor corn, beans, and squash as the Three Sisters. These plant relatives have sustained Wabanaki life from time immemorial. Whorls of ash dyed yellow represent kernels on the first basket, similar to the whorls on Clara’s blueberry basket. The basket is topped with a fan of leaves, or husks, carved from ash splints that anchor the handle to the lid. The second corn basket is woven differently. Instead of whorls, Rocky twists narrow weavers across rows to make a diagonal pattern. In between, the straight standards and weavers are visible. The texture is more subtle but just as dynamic. Many of his other baskets feature a similar weave, often mixing different textures across a single vessel. The lid is woven thick with sweetgrass at the top and around the rim.

Rocky Keezer (Passamaquoddy Tribe at Sipayik [or Pleasant Point], Maine, b. 1969), Ear of Corn Lidded Basket, before 2008, 11 ⅜ x 3 inches, sweetgrass and brown ash. Museums Collections, Gift of Leslie & Virginia Tronzo.

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Rocky Keezer (Passamaquoddy Tribe at Sipayik [or Pleasant Point], Maine, b. 1969), Watermelon Basket, before 2008, 3 ½ x 4 ⅞ inches, dyed and natural brown ash, sweetgrass. Museums Collections, Gift of Leslie & Virginia Tronzo. Two views.

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The rounded shape of this basket’s body and the bright colors of the ash splints makes it look like a watermelon just cracked open, thick with shiny dark seeds. Weaving a basket so that it resembles a piece of fruit, with all its color variations, is deceptively difficult. Rocky carefully studied the watermelon’s color palette before weaving the body in green, then wrapping sweetgrass and two white strips of ash around the top to resemble a white rind. The alternating pattern of twisted black splints on the deep pink lid mimics the pattern in which seeds grow. Toward the center of the lid, the pink grows darker, just like the sweetest of melons. Weaving baskets that resemble fruits and vegetables requires both close observation and clever solutions to coax the basket into the desired shape. 

Paula Thorne (Penobscot Nation), Penobscot Acorn Basket, ca. 1999, 3 inches (height including handle), dyed and natural brown ash, sweetgrass. Museums Collections, Museums Collections, Gift of Leslie & Virginia Tronzo.

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Paula Thorne (Penobscot Nation) crafted this acorn-shaped basket with thin strips of ash dyed dark brown. These exceedingly small baskets were originally made to carry supplies for tatting, or lace-making. Thorne comes from a family of basket makers. Her mentor was Penobscot weaver Christine Nicholas.^[4] Thorne has, in turn, mentored many others in the gathering and preparing of materials as well as the weaving of baskets. Thorne weaves miniature baskets that resemble everything from radishes to plums. Acorns have historically been an important source of food for many Wabanaki communities, similar to blueberries and corn. Basket making is even more difficult at such a small scale, where the grain of the ash fights even harder against each individual curl. Thorne twisted her strips of ash twice so that they would come to points, then braided the handle and wrapped the lid in sweetgrass to look like a hairy acorn cap. 

[1] David Shultz, Baskets of Time: Profiles of Maine Indian Basket Makers (Kennebunkport: Home & Away Gallery, 2017), 86.

[2] “Clara Neptune Keezer,” National Endowment for the Arts, accessed May 4, 2023, https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/clara-neptune-keezer.

[3] “Wild Blueberries,” Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry Co., July 14, 2021, https://pquoddyberries.com/wild-blueberries/.

[4] Maine Historical Society, “Paula Thorne Acorn Basket, Indian Island, ca. 1999,” Maine Memory Network, accessed May 4, 2023, https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/108747.