World-Class Rainforest Art

A collection—an accumulation of objects, marked by similarity among or with other members of the group, gathered for study, comparison, pleasure or exhibition—can be whimsical or archetypal, theoretical and even political. Among the most coveted of collectible ethnographic objects are baskets.

Contemporary weavers might agree that Webster lacked imagination when he defined baskets simply as “containers made of interwoven twigs, rushes, thin strips of wood or other flexible material.” Happily, weavers are highly creative and have experimented with any number of construction methods—plaited, coiled, wrapped, stitched, twined, embroidered, knotted and woven—with an array of organic and inorganic materials. Cane, rattan, sweet grass, cotton fabric, spun wool, silk, metal, coated and uncoated wire, plastic film and plastic tubing have been and will yet be manipulated and incorporated into a shape or design that ultimately we will intuitively recognize as “basket.” 

With the exception of stone tools, basketry is believed to be the oldest manufactured item, the first vessel to assist humankind with its daily task of sustaining life. Consider how a lightweight container of intertwined twigs transformed an individual plucking fruits and berries for his own breakfast into a purposeful gatherer who could now bring home enough food for his family. Eight thousand years ago, basket technology created a shift in mindset that revolutionized the way humans went about their daily tasks. Did a bird’s nest inspire that first weaver to imitate nature? Or was the thought process that brought about woven containers more mechanical and intentional? We can imagine that the first functional baskets were twined quickly, as needed, from materials at hand.

We will never know when or where that first spark of inspiration occurred. The prospect of finding in the rainforests of Panamá and Colombia remains of organic materials representing archaeologically significant works, much less any surviving basket record, is virtually nil. But we can rejoice at the knowable history and anticipate the future.

Although many botanicals could be constructed into a basket, the Wounaan found the sacred black palm that they call chunga (Astrocaryum standleyanum) particularly desirable for its durability, the fineness of strand that can be drawn, and for its acceptance of organic dyes. That basketry requires only the most basic tools of the trade—a machete, two hands, keen eyesight, needles, fibrous materials brewed with dyestuffs in large pots and time—makes it a communally egalitarian income opportunity.

After long experience, weavers’ ingenuity conceived another technique more complex than twining—coil construction. A coil starts with a small bundle of fibers that is usually tied in a small overhand knot. The more fibers gathered into the knot, the larger and thicker would be the coil that supports the basket.
Contemporary Wounaan Hösig Di are coil-construction baskets, and they are intended to function purely as art. Stuart Warner, in an article first published more than a decade ago in Native Peoples magazine, referred to the makers of Hösig Di as “Spirit Weavers.” The Wounaan, he tells us, believe that plants have spirits, and when the raw materials are gathered for basketry and woven together, those spirits are captured in the weavers’ art. That spirit is beautifully reflected in the museum-quality Hösig Di masterpieces selected for inclusion in the Meares Collection. We are proud to showcase many of these masterpieces from The Meares Collection in Weaving the Scarlet Macaw, along with many extraordinary works created by artists whom we believe will be master basketry artists of the future.

Though a Wounaan weaver will experiment with many designs, she often will favor one over another and modify the motif to suit baskets of varying shapes and sizes. Weavers who demonstrate the greatest technical and artistic skills are not always those who have been weaving the longest. As with any endeavor, artistic or practical, practice can make perfect, but proficiency can also be a measure of inherent ability and love of the medium. Today, impressive basketry of the highest quality is coming from young women in their early twenties and thirties, whose keen eyesight, fine manual dexterity, along with their innate sense of style and innovation are achieving a level of craftsmanship surpassing that of their mothers, aunts and mentors. And not all of these superb artists are women. The growing ranks of expert Wounaan male weavers is a testimony to the increasingly lucrative income that the finest works generate.

According to Wounaan tradition, only finely stitched baskets made from chunga can be called Hösig Di. The strong core material they call naguala (Carludovica palmate) is the same small palm used for Panamá hats, which, incidentally, are not made in Panamá at all, but are constructed in Ecuador.
Before the labor-intensive dyeing process can begin, vegetal dyestuffs must be gathered from the surrounding rainforest, or from weavers’ gardens. The raw materials are picked, dug, crushed, pounded, grated and squeezed. Berries, seeds, leaves, wood shavings, roots, and tubers yield subtle and brilliant shades, depending on their chemicals and processing. Some organic materials yield unexpected results—an intense magenta-pink is extracted from a from the green “Teca” (Teak) leaf. Red emerges from the dried “P’ucham” (trumpet-flower) vine. Aubergine is coaxed from the previously dyed achiote-orange (Bixa orellana) or P’ucham-red dyed chunga steeped overnight in silty river mud. Add a third-stage charcoal and jagua-juice infusion to the tannin-rich river mud to attain a deep, intense, glossy negro (black).

Over the several decades, almost two-dozen individual organic sources have yielded an array of first dye-batch colors. The incredible wealth of natural colors achieved through single and cross-dyeing processes, plus the reactivity of ultra-fine river mud, make for a palette that is pleasing and opulent, with no need for synthetic additions. In one village, weavers prefer to arrange bundles of orange, red, or pink dyed chunga in pails and overfill with river mud rather than submerge the material in the silty shallows, where it could be washed away or dug up. The pails are set for safekeeping in piraguas overnight, or longer. Some weavers’ recipe for an ideal, deepest expresso-midnight negro includes adding to the mud blue-black intensifying jagua juice, or cocobolo wood ash. The technique turns ordinary orange a lustrous, furniture-finish brown. Pink can shift to lavender or mauve. Red takes on rust hues if left for a short time. The longer it is steeped, it approaches burnt sienna, then mahogany and, finally, warm ebony.

Weavers with secret color combinations guard their recipes by working solo, dyeing small batches of chunga at a time, just enough for the basket each woman sees in her mind’s eye. Because it’s not always possible to estimate how much chunga of a single dye lot is needed for a basket that may take a year or more to complete (or which might grow larger than a weaver anticipated), multiple dye lots may be sewn into the motif. Subtle variations of hues within a color then occur, just as they do in prized oriental rugs and fine, hand-woven textiles. These variations are not blemishes, but are part of the charm of handmade objects created with vegetal dyes. And, as with antique baskets, rugs and textiles made from natural dyes, through time their subtleness becomes them even more than the brilliance of newness.

Awareness of potential gradual mellowing helps a buyer new to basket or textile art collecting decide whether or not to be proactive and slow the natural aging process. Curatorial technology has come light years since grandfather began his valuable basket collection, and, today, we know volumes more about the effects of UV, air pollution and noxious chemicals in the home. Several collectors of both Native American and Wounaan baskets mitigate the potentially fugitive nature of vegetal-dyed colors within their valuable baskets by showcasing a representative sampling safely protected from dust in glass cases, lit with low-intensity, cool UV-filtered art lights. Curators offer the same advice. The remainder of a very large collection could be stored to emerge in rotation presentations looking as pristine as they day they were completed. As one might guess, reds, oranges and yellows are more fugitive than blues, blacks, browns and some greens.

Weavers have experimented with aniline dyes, boiled crepe paper, Kool-Aid and even mosquito coils, producing hot pinks, reflex blues and psychedelic lime greens. But two early Wounaan basket collectors and weaver coaches, Panamanian-born writer, photographer Stuart Warner and former Panamá gallery owner Llori Gibson, discouraged “cruise-ship” colors and, themselves, purchased only vegetal-dyed work.

Because of the increased hazards associated with treks into the jungle for raw materials, many weavers now choose to grow their most commonly used vegetal dye plants in small garden plots behind their huts. Still, during many chunga- and dye-stuff gathering expeditions, a village shaman and holy women are likely to engage in a sacred dance of protection that will last until the party’s return from the jungle, or, often, at least until midday. The faces, torsos, legs and arms of the shaman and dancers are adorned with ritualistic geometric designs.

Body painting is an artful expression born out of tradition and spiritual beliefs. The “paint” is derived from a fruit the Wounaan call by its Spanish name, jagua. The late Panamá botanist and Wounaan basket collector Elizabeth Leigh described Genipa americana as having a consistency that is “a cross between the jicama and potato.” To prepare a dye for skin or chunga fibers, starchy grated jagua pulp is squeezed through a cloth to extract its clear juice. To be visible to the painter, the juice is mixed with sooty wood ash. The resulting thin, squid-ink-looking liquid is painted on with miniature corncobs or forked sticks to a body that is often dusted lightly with talcum powder, appearing as a whiteboard ready for lettering. Within hours, the juice begins to stain the skin a deep bluish brown, revealing definitive and meaningful geometric designs as ordered in the beginning time by the Creator, Hé'wandam, according to creation stories told to Ron and Kathy Binder during their many years living among the Wounaan.

The geometric motifs on many baskets draw their inspiration from body paintings and the patterns on spiritual paraphernalia used by village jaibanas, or shamans. For that reason, baskets woven with adaptations of these designs are called cultural, or cultura in Spanish, the second language in the Darién and official language of Panamá. Basket designs that are not geometric are pictorial. These are the rainforest motifs that include flowers, trees, birds (especially scarlet and blue and gold macaw, toucans and hummingbirds), sea creatures (octopus, dolphins, marlin, orca), butterflies, monkeys, ocelots, jaguars and even whimsical iguanas.

Geometric influences can also be traced to designs found on pre-Columbian textiles, ceramics, and rock art. A number of patterns woven into Wounaan baskets and used in body painting—such as the cross, swastika, the so-called Greek key, and fishhook—are ubiquitous and appear across cultures worldwide.

Neuroscientists, anthropologists and artists have long hypothesized why this is so. No few theories attempting to gain insight into the nature and origins of ubiquitous artistic expression propose a neurobridge backwards in time to the Upper Paleolithic Art. While plausible to its protractors, this construct of first art and durable art is rejected as specious by others. Discussions inevitably include the primary impact of entoptic (also entopic) phenomena. “Entoptic,” derived from the Greek for “within vision,” refers not only to phenomena originating within the optic system, but also those images emanating as a result of “communications” between the eye itself and the cortex, where signals from the optic nerve are interpreted, explain David Lewis-Williams and Thomas A. Dowson in their 1988 article The Signs of All Times: Entopic Phenomena in Upper Paleolithic Art.

Lewis-Williams and Dowson proffer that our nervous system has changed little over the last one hundred thousand years, and, therefore, the entoptic phenomena (also known as Scheerer’s phenomenon, The Neurological Side of Neuropsychology, Richard E. Cytowic, 1996) experienced by contemporary peoples is likely similar or identical to those visions produced under varying circumstances by early hunter-gatherers. The authors further break down entoptic phenomena to include patterns called “phosphenes,” which are easily produced closing the eyes and applying gentle pressure to the eyelids. The other imagery that they call “form constants” manifests in the cortex itself.

Studies on primitive and ubiquitous geometric patterns also distinguish between the imagery created entoptically and those from hallucinogenics. Entoptic geometric patterns—such as the grid, parallel lines, wavy lines, dots, zigzags, cross-hatching, chevrons, honeycombs, chessboards, circular forms, cobwebs, tunnels and funnels, often in vivid colors, expanding, contracting and even overlaying each other and frequently appearing with a bright light in the center of the visual field—originate within the nervous system, “whereas,” Lewis-Williams and Dowson explain, “hallucinations are iconic and culturally determined and may be experienced in all senses (aural, visual, tactile, olfactory and synesthetic) not just the visual. Because these percepts are ‘wired’ into the human nervous system, all people, no matter what their cultural background, have the potential to experience them.”

In her thesis A Case for Universality; Abstraction, Synaesthesia, Neurology and Mysticism, Entopic Phenomena and the Origins of Art, Rebecca Partridge, Royal Academy Schools, London, and lecturer at Cambridge School of Art, underscores Lewis-Williams’ premise that further dynamics take place between images in the mind’s eye, (whether seen with eyes closed or open and projected onto the surrounding space) and “the mind’s attempts to make sense of these images by fitting them into a familiar form,” which we often refer to as archetypal symbols.

When history and science writer Alistair Boddy-Evans relocated in 2008 to the Isle of Skye, Scotland, he had already spent ten years observing the capacity of rhythmic, repetitive drumming and dancing to produce trance states and ecstasy among South Africans. The ability of indigenous cultures to focus sensory stimuli to such a heightened extent that they produce questing experiences and entoptic visions fascinated Boddy-Evans, especially when these experiences were not further enhanced or induced with psychotropic drugs found in certain foods and drink.

So powerful to our subconscious are these ubiquitous patterns that shamans and corianders frequently perceive them to be messages from the spirits and transfer them onto objects used in their healing ceremonies. Examples of these mind/spirit geometric and entoptic symbols can be seen on numerous shamanic ethnographic objects in The Meares Collection, which were included in the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum exhibition late in 2005.

Pictorial motifs, or natura, a term coined in the late 1970s to describe the flora and faunal designs inspired by artists’ surrounding rainforest, also include depictions of creatures inhabiting rivers and coastal waters. For seafaring villagers on tidal rivers, designs convey the many great and small creatures that live in and near the ocean, as well as branching coral and undulating seaweed.

Because Wounaan basket artistry is a fairly recent phenomenon—evolving to its current level of complexity only over the last two generations—younger women who initially learned to weave from mothers or aunts have likely surpassed their mentors’ creativity, skill and income. Several weavers have emerged as mentors, teachers and master artists. Dalia Negria is one such person. Many of her “sister” weavers and several knowledgeable basket collectors credit Dalia as the first weaver more than two decades ago to stitch a crude bird design into her basket. She laughs at that early attempt, as today she commands a premium for her extraordinarily complex multi-year masterpieces, which set a benchmark for coiled basketry worldwide. In workshops throughout the Darién, Dalia and a handful of other master artists coached women with less experience in techniques to improve the quality of their work and, in so doing, their incomes. The demands of collectors for museum-quality geometrics have driven weavers to fashion works with the same precision and élan with which they created rainforest designs.

Coaching, nurturing, even prodding by devoted supporters was the pebble tossed in the pool. And, for villages closest to the epicenter, the ripples began an economic turnaround. From mother to daughter, sister-to-sister, village-to-village, the design revolution gained momentum. In addition to the Binders, among those early (and enduring) advocates of Wounaan (and Emberá) artists who created opportunities to showcase work, attract customers and stimulate production were Gibson and her partners in New World Gallery of Balboa, Panamá, Eleanor Gale and Jackie Fearon, along with then Smithsonian biologist John Cubit. Like rocket fuel, this handful of people propelled recognition in the United States of the Wounaan and Emberá as talented indigenous craftsmen. The die had been cast, especially for the Wounaan. An array of motifs blossomed which continues to evolve and mature through individual interpretation.

Vintage Hösig Di (from the mid 1970s to the late 1980s) are found only in formative collections. It likely occurred to few buyers who purchased early Wounaan baskets as souvenirs from their Panamá trip that one day these pieces would have a historical story all their own to tell.

Over the last two-dozen years that Darién basketry has evolved from crude tourist souvenirs to world-class collection pieces, development of distinct weaving methods was also a function of experimentation. Two types of stitch variations on the coil construction emerged. The manner in which chunga is stitched over the coil is personal preference. Each is an exercise in patience.

Most prevalent is the technique called “silk stitch,” named decades ago by Stuart Warner, Panamá author and photographer and earliest exporter of Darién basketry to the US. Silk stitch equates easily to satin–stitch embroidery, well-known to those who do needlework. In silk stitch, the design-making loop that wraps the coil foundation of the basket partially enters the preceding row and encircles the new row in progress. The next row wrap will reach down to catch the lower coil and bind them together in alternating stitches.

A ribbed exterior texture, or “rib stitch,” is obtained using a half-double stitch Gibson and weavers call medio doblado. To create a distinctive, handsome corduroy appearance, the weaver adds more stands of naguala to thicken the interior coil that is the structural core of the basket. Here, the weaver accentuates the natural curvature of this thicker core, as the wrap catches both the lower and new coil. Although geometric patterns lend themselves particularly well to rib stitching, one weaver uses this technique masterfully to achieve beautiful floral and faunal designs that resemble needlepoint.

Another expert rib-stitch weaver adds very little additional material to her coil as it spirals to form the basket. She accentuates the coil with her taut, flat medio doblado stitches, giving the exterior an eye-fooling beaded appearance. Her baskets are feather light and look delicate, yet they feel sturdy and firm in the hand. Rib stitching can be used to produce an overall “pixilated” appearance that emphasizes geometric motifs.

Gibson adds a third type of stitch, which she called diente pienado (after the teeth in a comb). She describes it as a less-fine version of the silk stitch. For simplicity in identification, however, silk- and rib-stitch categories are sufficient.

Several master weavers have refined the silk-stitch technique, working as many as 60 to 90 or more thread-fine strands of chunga per inch into treasures that appear like tapestries. While exacting and tedious, close, tight stitching affords the artist an opportunity to create subtle shading of petals and define a flower’s delicate stamen and pistil with a single stitch. Many collectors contend that these breath-taking refinements in pictorial motifs, which represent an understanding of the artist’s three-dimensional world, have launched Wounaan basketry into a world-class arena.

Several dealers of Native American baskets maintain that the tightness and fineness of museum-quality Hösig Di rival the rye grass baskets of the Alutiiq of Prince William Sound and Kodiak Island, the Unangan (Aleut), particularly Attu, Atka and Unalaska, and Tlingit bear grass baskets. These weaving groups have been considered by many collectors and museum curators to rank supreme in all the world. Apparently, Alutiiq baskets also struck the fancy of James Cook in 1778, as made their way into his collection.

Buyers of premium Hösig Di also equated them to the finest horsehair baskets woven in the desert Southwest. An exquisite 5.15"-diameter Tohono O’odham squash-blossom design horsehair basket by Ruby Thomas recently sold for $3,600. Several well-executed, non-Indian horsehair miniature baskets that the artist estimated took thirty to fifty hours each to complete were priced at $575-$700. By contrast, at this writing, a new 13.5"-diameter, tri-color Navajo tray of loose weave was priced at $1,350.

It seems that a measure of quality in the minds of first-time Wounaan basket buyers is demonstrated by the question we’re frequently asked: “Do they hold water?” They do, but, please, resist the urge to test an Hösig Di, or any fine basket, this way, because water stains are permanent. Research indicates that many pre-historic Central and South American rainforest tribes made and used pottery to carry and store water and did not need basketry for this purpose. This is in contrast to many nomadic or semi-nomadic Native American tribes for whom pottery was impractical and baskets were coated with pitch or a similar substance to make them waterproof.

As vintage and antique Native American baskets are proof, time creates its own beautiful, mellow patina so cherished by collectors. There is no advantage to prematurely aging a basket through neglect or poor handling. Too much moisture not only can yellow the “white” chunga fibers of an Hösig Di, but it can also cause irreparable damage. According to former curators of Smithsonian basket collections, a soaked coil basket could spell disaster if not properly treated. As a basket’s exterior fibers dry, they shrink more rapidly than the dense, wet coil. If these wrap-stitches are stretched too much, they will snap and require repair. Furthermore, the basket is now susceptible to mold and mildew. The finer the weave, the more the coil is buried, and its likelihood of drying at the same rate as the wrap is slim.

Weavers—be they female or male—create extraordinary works for several reasons. First, they can. They have mastered the techniques necessary to produce an awe-inspiring object and are boastfully proud of it. An exquisite basket completed is like a new child, born of long labor. Second, large, museum-quality master works are appearing because we have dedicated the greater part of our relationship to developing a market for them. It was inevitable that weavers of the finest baskets think in increasingly higher four digits rather than three.

Collectors—we include ourselves—have watched prices of Hösig Di soar over the years. We won’t complain, as we are partly responsible. Our patron practice of working directly with Wounaan artists to whom we commission works taking one, two or three years to complete has contributed to driving weavers’ asking prices higher and higher. The commitment to produce such works is considerable, as is our commitment to support the artists who create them. Alongside commissioned baskets, weavers often will simultaneously produce smaller works. While we dubbed these “sanity baskets,” we are not so naïve as to believe that their primary function is merely to relieve tedium. Offering the closest thing to instant gratification, these small “asides,” which can be completed within weeks or months rather than years, are a source of easier cash. There is no doubt that sanity baskets prolong completion of commissioned masterworks.

Just as decades ago advocates for the Wounaan committed time, resources and energy to promote the art form, we, too, take seriously the role of patron to support the desire and perseverance of a weaver to become master artist and share her artistic and economic opportunities with her community. Patron relationships have existed for millennia in the both the Old World and the New. There is certainly precedence for it in the in America. One well-known example is that of celebrated Washoe Indian weaver Louisa Keyser and a trader family. Believed to be born around 1850, Keyser, known as “Datsolalee,” was hired by patron, Abe Cohn, in the early 1900s to weave exclusively for him. According to Cohn’s records, around 1917 a collector was so insistent that he have one of Datsolalee’s finest works that he willingly paid $5,000 for it. In her book Collecting Traditional American Basketry, Gloria Roth Teleki concludes that perhaps as significant as the prices her baskets commanded, during an era when the value of the dollar was markedly greater, was that her work had surpassed designation as craft and was proclaimed “art.” One early twentieth-century, masterful 16-inch-diameter basket, eleven months in construction, was praised for having a “taut weave that demanded more than thirty stitches to the inch.”

One of the finest examples in The Meares Collection was a small, exquisite geometric with one hundred two stitches per inch. Not surprisingly, the size of the basket (the size of the coil, to be precise) makes minute stitches self-limiting. While these small masterpieces are truly inspiring, working precision, micro-fine stitches on a larger basket with its correspondingly thicker coil is a technological achievement beyond our imaginings. It should be understood that the fine stitch in this case refers to the thickness of the strand as well as its short length, making it all the more phenomenal. One work created for the Meares Collection, measuring 16.5" high by 20.5" in diameter and approximately 64" in circumference, was created with sixty-three stitches to the inch. A cultura masterpiece specially commissioned for the Meares Collection came in at 16" high and ninety-four exacting stitches to the inch. This pièce de résistance is now in a private Beverly Hills collection. One weaver astonishes by fashioning a substantively thicker coil than most. Subsequently, her wrapping strands must have sufficient length to bridge the mid-space from one wide row to the next. Her meticulous craftsmanship perfectly detailed macaw with these extremely thin, yet long, strands on a large basket.

When we first began to work with and collect Hösig Di, we could find no established, unwritten or written system whereby we could classify the quality of a basket. So, we devised one to fit our subjective sensibilities. It sounded logical to start by establishing parameters for the best and the worst. The coarsest specimens, poorly constructed with crude designs and few or garishly artificial colors we labeled “tourist-grade,” and we decided they were not for us. With those out of the picture, we could focus on defining what we meant by the best and levels below best.

The breath-taking, aesthetically evolved baskets with the finest construction relative to the number of stitches per inch we called “Museum Quality.” On the other end of the spectrum that remained, we the baskets that we described as great gifts or “starter-baskets,” pleasing, affordable, we called “Attractive Quality.”

Then we defined two more categories between the two ends of the spectrum. Seemed simple enough. A notch below “Museum Quality” came “Exceptional,” those just short of crème-de-la-crème. “Choice” baskets were much improved over the “Attractive” variety, but in elemental ways missed the “Exceptional” mark. We were faced with a dilemma: we measured our baskets by criteria so rigorous that baskets offered elsewhere that would have fit into our “Choice” category were aggrandized as museum quality.

Nevertheless, we couldn’t be responsible for the offerings of others. To differentiate ourselves, we chose to eliminate “Attractive” baskets and left that niche to the gift-show vendors. It is one thing to have a heartfelt connection to all Darién weavers and desire to financially support them through purchases of their goods, regardless of quality. But the reality check is that dollars spread only so far, and creating a market for Hösig Di involves more than having a big heart.

While we continue to evaluate and make cursory judgments about new acquisitions using our early ranking system, baskets in a “gray area” sometimes defy categorization. Truly, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some baskets clearly exude a decided “wow” factor, even though they may not be technically perfect.

We recognized that our first impression could sometimes be tempered by closer examination. The gray-area baskets came under closer scrutiny—their design, shape and colors were pleasing, they were well executed, and they met Gibson’s definition of diente peinado. We had to ask ourselves: Can a basket be worthy of the designation museum quality if it doesn’t meet the higher stitch-per-inch criterion? Considering the baskets in question, the answer had to be a resounding, “Yes.” And visitors to the world-premiere exhibition of Wounaan art and culture at the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum, which we curated in 2005, agreed. What does our quality ranking system mean to a collector? It is important only as assurance that Hösig Di included in The Meares Collection have been carefully selected to be among the finest native baskets in the Americas.

Few people are aware that there are five hundred seventy-five federally recognized tribes still living in the US. Each has its own unique history and culture. Though we have long (and mistakenly) thought of Native Americans as a collective indigenous people, there was never a single “Indian” way of life. Peoples inhabiting Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and southern California created the fine baskets we treasure today. Which tribal baskets should a new collector of that genre choose? And, if the prices of Native American baskets have become prohibitively high for you, where do you look for contemporary collection-quality works?

By contrast to the hundreds of tribal groups in North America, there are few indigenous cultures in Central America who make fine baskets. The Seri of Mexico are excellent weavers, and their ceremonial baskets can be quite large and command thousands of dollars. Still, museum curators—among them the late Armand Labbé of the Bowers Museum, California—concur that the finest contemporary native basketry in all the Americas are Hösig Di. Several of the most-reputable dealers of antique and vintage Native American basketry have said that baskets from our collection are “the finest they have ever seen anywhere.”

Hösig Di are increasingly sought after by serious collectors of diverse art forms, including those whose focus had been exclusively Native American basketry, as well as first-time buyers new to collecting. One reason that the finest Hösig Di have been so well-received is that museum-quality works from any culture embody the finest expression of humanity’s artistic creativity. Rarely in this twenty-first century do we see individuals or groups of any nationality voluntarily devoted to the creation of objects that are so labor-intensive that they would require of us more patience than we would be willing to give them.

Extraordinary, collectible, contemporary Japanese baskets sing to us with their poetic, lyrical, sinuous forms. While they resonate with our aesthetic sensibilities in many ways, they intentionally have a very different quality than the spirit baskets painstakingly birthed over such long gestation periods by true masters of transformation: palms from a viciously spiked tree metamorphose into a three-dimensional tapestry rich with the palette of nature.

Collectors also have told us that another reason why Hösig Di are desirable is that—though expensive compared to the products produced by many indigenous cultures—they still are at price points well below antique and vintage Native American basketry in comparable sizes. A third reason may seem self-evident, but we would be remiss not to bring it up: astute collectors recognize that construction of Hösig Di may someday become a lost art. Many of our most ardent clients have given us an overriding criterion for the objects they select: “If it isn’t made by human hands, it isn’t worth collecting.”

Making an informed decision about your basket selection doesn’t have to be painful. You probably already know—instinctively—the criteria for evaluating a high-quality basket. Here are some considerations:

Hösig Di: The Making of a Masterpiece

weaving the scarlet macaw, Chapter two

In his foreword to Kari Lønning’s The Art of Basketry, independent curator Michael W. Monroe writes:

Artists who create baskets…are experts at weaving three-dimensional forms, sculptural, functional, or non-functional vessels, from linear materials. Their ability to master volume and void is strong evidence of their masterful handling of materials and techniques, not as an end in themselves, but rather in the service of their ideas and desires to create baskets as art.

Denis Dutton, author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, released in December 2008, PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, and acting head of the Philosophy school at Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand, is also a co-founder and co-editor for the popular online forum Arts & Letters Daily. Fascinated by society’s perception of beauty and art (as were Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and scores of others), Dutton took up residence with the wood carvers of the Sepik River region of New Guinea to learn what art, craft and beauty means to them. In a Radio New Zealand broadcast that aired, July 4, 1990, the academic tackled the question: “Is it art or is it craft?” Here are excerpts from this discussion.

Craft work is skilled work: any kind of craft must involve the application of a technique. The word, after all, is the German Kraft, simply means power or ability. Craft implies the application of human intelligence, and usually when we use the word, we have in mind the application of the human hand. The crafts tend to produce things that are useful for various human purposes, and though they may be pretty or pleasing in any number of ways, craft objects tend to exhibit their prettiness around a purpose external to the object itself. To this extent, the crafts aren’t arts, according to an idea, which found fullest expression in the aesthetics of the great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. Works of art, Kant said, are “intrinsically final”: they appeal purely at the level of the imagination and aren’t good for any practical utility, except the cultivation of the human spirit.

In the 1930s, British philosopher R. G. Collingwood listed a set of criteria that distinguish art from craft. The most important, or at least interesting, of these is that with craft, and not with art, there is “a distinction between planning and execution” such that the “result to be obtained is preconceived or thought out before being arrived at.” This foreknowledge, Collingwood says, must not be vague, but must be precise. On the one hand, there is the crafty application of a predictable, learned (and, incidentally, teachable) skill capable of producing a preconceived result, and on the other end—on the other end, well, what? For Collingwood, the answer was that art, among other things, expresses emotion. But by now it should be obvious that the strict demarcation between art and craft, as I’ve begun to explain it, exists only in the philosopher’s imagination.

In the first place, almost all traditionally acknowledged art involves—indeed, requires—craft; it requires the application of technique. At least it has historically, and the training for practitioners in all of the arts has involved the mastery of techniques (though this differs among the arts). Thus, for the last 2,500 years, it might be said at least that craft of some sort has been considered a necessary condition for artistic practice. There are elements of art in the most ordinarily humble of crafts. The love of materials, the original leaps of imagination, the ability not only to delight but also to jar an audience, and reveal new possibilities in a craft medium—these are features of the artistic act, and they, Collingwood contends, “characterize all crafts at their most engaging.”

There is nothing wrong with producing for a market or according to external social needs. After all, most of the great art of European history has been produced to fulfill religious requirements, or the demands of royalty. The question is, whether this is all it is, or whether it is also, in Collingwood’s terms, an expressive exploration of the formal and emotional possibilities of an artistic medium. On the other hand, there might be craftspeople, so-called, who, using fiber, clay, and other apparently “disreputable” materials, are in fact doing what Collingwood calls art.

One reason his theory of art and craft is so attractive is that it makes the question of what distinguishes art from craft completely independent of the materials an artist uses, the genre in which the work is produced, and the sex or social status of the artist. I, for one, admit that art interests me a lot, but art only rarely delivers the sublime experiences the aesthete seeks. All the more reason to admire the accomplished craftsperson, someone with a demonstrable skill who can produce something useful and pleasing, than an artist whose muddy visions are no help to anybody, either for human understanding or decorative enjoyment.

As Kant said, at its best, art cultivates and expands the human spirit. But it doesn’t do that often, because most artists aren’t up to it. The dependable, polished craftsperson can deliver. Many of the so-called crafts can be termed “art” without excuse or apology. It is not, then, the medium or even the person that makes art, art and craft, craft. It is rather the character of the making involved. As all arts in some way involve techniques that can be taught and learned, that are to some extent governed by rules and routine, and that produce a preconceived result, all arts involve craft. And most crafts beyond plumbing and auto repair can be expressive, can explore the novel and undiscovered possibilities of a medium—and, hence, can be, in that respect, arts. But there is no mechanical way to discover in an artistic performance the elements of art and of craft. Craft is, in fact, one of the borderlands of art.

Author Lønning proposes that contemporary baskets—as subjective objects—are the most creative and diverse of art forms. But their real significance, she contends, is that “baskets are creating dialogues between makers and audiences, ideas and materials.”

Technological Western societies have many substitutes for the once-vital, multi-tasking functional basket. Since we no longer need to fill baskets with something, the role that basketry plays in our lives has shifted. To the collector purchasing an expensive antique or vintage Native American basket, acquisition may purely feed a collecting obsession. To the collector of the arts, a basket exists for purely aesthetic reasons that are the dialogue. To its maker, this dialogue must include the value she attaches to her artistic expression, skill, or craft, and time investment.

Just as with any art form, we say, “Buyer beware.” The Internet abounds with baskets labeled “Emberá/Wounaan,” purporting to be museum-quality Hösig Di. Recognize that one can buy a sable coat (please don’t) and one can buy synthetic furs or fleece! Authentic Hösig Di—as officially defined by Wounaan weavers and tribal leaders—are fine, chunga-palm (no cotton thread or raffia substitutes) baskets, stitched with a needle, over many weeks, months or years. Authentic Hösig Di have become the primary income source for many hundreds of Wounaan women and men weavers.

And, just as collectors are becoming increasingly aware of the Hösig Di art form and the qualities that distinguish the works of one artist from another, artists are learning about and manifesting the Western definition of excellence. In the process of mutual discovery, more than a few weavers are surpassing their own highest expectations. More than a few who lovingly beheld their latest masterpiece—doting on it as a first-born child—confided to us that never in their wildest imaginings would they have dreamed themselves capable of creating such technically demanding works. With nothing more than a little welcomed guidance, their own keen observational skills, respect for traditions, and patience, Wounaan weavers embarked upon an incredible journey that blurred the distinctions between craft and art and fed our craving for beauty over functionality.

In that long lineage of collectors, we are all related. Each of us value and preserve that which captures our imagination and stirs something archetypal within us.

Copyright © 2008 Charlotte Meares

Purchasing an Hösig Di is a pleasurable experience for you, as you add beauty and serenity to your milieu, but also to the artist, who is gratified that her culmination of months and years of work is valued. The following questions spring from the discussion above and may be helpful in your selection process as you personalize how you respond to these various decision-making factors.