Basket for carrying cotton

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

A large, woven, wooden basket for carrying cotton. This basket has been constructed using a basic under-and-over-weaving pattern with flat, wide basket strands made from strips of medium toned wood. Throughout the body of the basket, weavers and spokes vary between approximately .75” and 1” in width. At the bottom of the basket, the weavers become increasingly narrow towards the center of the base, ranging from approximately .3” to .5” in width. The basket is roughly circular in shape, with two basket strands on the exterior and one on the interior securing the rim with wrapped metal wire. The basket has two, square, wooden handles, notched and bent at each corner and held in place by the weave of the basket body and metal wire, which has been double-wrapped in some places to provide additional support to the handles.

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