Navajo Wedding Basket
 This Vintage Navajo Wedding Basket is a traditional handwoven bowl, and everyone should have at least one in their collection! What makes this basket special is the fact that it was actually used for the purpose for which it was made and not just a tourist item. Often, when not in use, owners would take the baskets to the local trading post or nearby merchant and either pawn them for cash or sell them outright. When needed for another occasion, the person would then either retrieve hers from pawn or purchase/make another one. The symbolic pattern is mostly used on the happy occasion of a marriage, but it's also used in healing ceremonies and coming of age ceremonies for young girls. Skillfully woven with yucca, sumac and willow, there's a fabric plug at the center and the remainders of corn meal in the crevices. It's 10-3/4" wide and 2-3/4" deep, c irca 1930's, or earlier, and in very good, used condition. There are no apparent broken stitches, though the mountain mahogany red dye has faded somewhat. The Navajo Ceremonial Basket or Navajo Wedding Basket is one of the few baskets woven by Native Americans that is used in ceremonies. There are many interpretations for the basket designs. Colors of the Navajo Wedding basket have symbolic meaning. White represents the Spirit World or clouds. Black represents darkness or mountains. Red symbolizes blood, the Navajo Hogan (home) and a rainbow of good luck. Inside the red band are the Sacred Mountains of Navajo land. Outside the red band are the mountains of clouds. The main feature of the basket design is the Pathway (the opening in the basket design). A Navajo arrives into the world from the center of the basket and the Spirit World and always has a path to return to the Spirit World. During the wedding ceremony it is pointed to the East and never pointed down. The Navajo Ceremonial Basket also called Navajo Wedding basket is viewed as a map through which the Navajo chart their lives. The central spot in the basket represents the sipapu, where the Navajo people emerged from the prior world through a reed. The inner coils of the basket are white to represent birth. As you travel outward on the coils you'll begin to encounter more black. The black represents darkness, struggle, and pain. As you make your way through the darkness, you eventually reach the red bands which represent marriage; the mixing of your blood with your spouse and creation of family. The red is pure. During this time there is no darkness. Traveling out of famial bands you encounter more darkness, however the darkness is interspersed with white light. The light represents increasing enlightenment, which expands until you enter the lighter banding of the outer rim. This banding represents the spirit world, where there is no darkness. The braided rim is explained by the Navajo in terms of this legend: A Navajo woman was weaving under a juniper tree, trying to think of finishing the rim in some manner different from that of the regular stitch. A god tore a small sprig from the tree and tossed it into her basket. Immediately she thought of the braided rim. (Indian Baskets of the Southwest, Clara Lee Tanner. 1983). The line from the center of the basket to the outer rim is there to remind you that no matter how much darkness you encounter in your world there is always a pathway to the light. This pathway during the ceremonies is always pointed east. The last coil on the basket rim is finished off at this pathway to allow the medicine man to easily locate it in darkness. Additionally, the Navajo Ceremonial Basket serves another purpose. In none of the ancient Navajo rites is a regular drum or tom tom employed . . . The inverted basket serves the purpose.
Size is 10-1/2"dia x 2"high.
Do you hear the drums beating?
$1050.00 Questions? Ask the Ferret!
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