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Presentation Bowl
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
This basket was made for the Euro-American collectors’ market in the early 1900s but it is modeled on basketry bowls from which the Timbisha (Panamint) Shoshone once served food. When used indigenously, the main view would have been of the interior. The two small, pink crosses, made of flicker (woodpecker) quills, may be a maker’s mark. Made-for-sale baskets testify to Indigenous women’s truly creative, resilient responses to forces that endangered their livelihoods and existence.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit linePresentation Bowl, 1880–90. Native North America, Great Basin, California, Death Valley, Timbisha (Panamint) Shoshone. Devil's claw, sumac, yucca root, orange-shafted flicker (woodpecker) quills; coiled (2 rod and bundle of deer grass or basket grass); diameter: 21.5 x 48 cm (8 7/16 x 18 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Presented by William Albert Price in memory of Mrs. William Albert Price, 1917.482
