O’NEALE’S FIELD NOTES AND BASKETWEAVING IN 1929 |
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After interviewing most of the weavers who are currently making caps, the author recognized that traditions have significantly changed since 1932 when Lila O'Neale published her pioneering
classic study, Yurok- Karok Basket Weavers. O'Neale's anthropological approach focused on the aesthetics and techniques of the basketmakers she interviewed while relegating the weavers to
the background. Basketmakers were never her intended audience and her book is seldom known to Indian weavers. Her methodology boldly featured weavers’ aesthetic assessments of baskets
from photographs she showed each weaver. O’Neale then categorized and statistically evaluated the weavers’ responses to her photographs of baskets. Her diagrams and photographs provide
invaluable information about the processes of basketmaking in 1929. All the weavers O’Neale interviewed remained anonymous and she referred to each person by an assigned number. Their
names are given in her unpublished Field Notes and were first published in Elizabeth Conrad Hickox, Baskets from the Center of the World. The weaver’s own baskets were only featured by
O'Neale in a few display photographs, but even in these they remained anonymous. Even the 1995 republished edition with a cover photograph of O'Neale and a weaver was only identified
last year as Nellie Cooper by her daughter, Vera Ryerson. |
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In contrast, this publication is a selected history of Indian weavers of several generations by the weavers themselves and a few friends and relatives. This work is by them and for them. It tells
their personal stories both as family history and as a history of their art. It was made possible by the generosity of the weavers, relatives, and friends who have been interviewed. They have
lent their treasured caps for this exhibition from their private local Indian family collections |