Baskets:1904 - 1960

Beacon Lights, the willow basket at the right, was made by Louise Keyser in 1904 - 05. She was member of the Washoe tribe in Nevada. Her tribe had been hunter - gatherers for thousands of years, and their way of life was changed quickly by the 1848 California gold rush.

Keyser was contacted by Abe Cohn, a businessman in Carson City, Nevada, who asked her to make baskets to sell. The result was a new money-making industry for Keyser and other members of her tribe.

This basket is made of baleen, the stiff fibrous plates in the mouth of the baleen whale that filter the plankton. It was made by Carl Toolak in 1940. A member of the Inupiat tribe in the northwest, Toopiak was one of the few men to make baskets and one of the first to use baleen as material. He used white bird quills to provide variation in the color. The knob is carved ivory.

Toopiak was approached by a non - native, Charles Brower, to make the basket. Brower continued to commission the baskets as gifts for his friends, and a new industry for the Inupiat tribe was born.

The Gullah rice fanner basket at right was made by Caesar Johnson in 1960. Made of rush, it was used to separate the chaff from the rice after it was crushed by a mortar and pestle. The basket is a tradition brought from West Africa by slaves.

Pottery: c. 1100 - c. 1960

The pots illustrated here are beautiful, and provide a glimpse of the cultures and traditions that produced them. Each object exemplifies a craft that was handed down and improved upon generations.

These cylindrical clay jars were made by potters about 800 years ago in the Four Corners area where the modern day borders of New Mexico, Arizon, Utah, and Colorado meet. We don't know how the jars were used although some archaeologists believe they may have been used in rituals.

This bowl was made by a Sikyatki potter sometime between 1350 and 1700. The creature is something more than a reptile - it wears a three feather headdress. and its snout and one of its toes stretch to great length. The Hopi live in the area occupied by the Sityakti people who were destroyed before the Spanish explorers arrived. The meaning of symbolism of Sityakti pottery has been forgotten, but the style has been copied by 20th century Hopi potters.

Made in 1939 by Pueblo potters Maria Montoya Martinez and her husband, Julian Martinez, this jar is a study in opposing forces and restraint. The couple were contacted in 1909 by an archaeologist who asked them to find a way to reproduce the style of ancient pottery found near their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They discovered how to get the black on black finish on jars made from red clay.

The Art of Quilting

Quilting in early America was a rare pastime for colonial women. Days were filled with demanding tasks. Letters and diaries from the colonial period lead us to believe that most women quilted in the evenings May through November when the days were longer.

The invention of the cotton gin, the opening of textile factories, and the development of the power loom made the production of cloth cheaper. The invention of the sewing machine made sewing faster, and quilting became more popular as quilt patterns were developed and spread among families and friends, published in ladies' magazines, and available through catalogs.

The quilts pictured below were made in the 19th and 20th centuries. Most of them were made by Amish women living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Crazy Quilt by Hannah and Emm Greenlee, Marion, NC

Finished in 1896

Wild Goose Chase, c. 1920, Lancaster, PA
Bars Pattern, c. 1925, Lancaster, PA
Lone Star Pattern, c. 1920, Lancaster, PA

Diamond in the Square, c. 1935, Lancaster, PA

Louis Comfort Tiffany

Autumn Landscape - The River of Life

Louis Comfort Tiffany

Louis C. Tiffany was born in New York City on Feb. 18, 1848, the son of the founder and director of the jewelry retailers Tiffany and Company. Louis was interested in painting as a young man; he studied with George Inness and traveled in Europe and Africa, recording his impressions. Because of his pictures' decorative qualities, they were successful in New York.

By the 1870s Tiffany was becoming interested in the decorative arts. He and the painter, John LaFarge, studied glassmaking at the Heidt glassworks in Brooklyn. Their original individual experiments probably concerned stained glass. However, the process whereby an iridescent finish could be produced on glass fascinated Tiffany; he was trying to duplicate the finish seen on ancient Greek, Roman, and other glass which had been buried for many hundreds of years. By 1880 he had applied for patents on this type of finish.

In 1879 he founded the Louis C. Tiffany Company, "Associated Artists." The firm decorated private and public buildings. Two of the best examples of this work in New York City were the 7th Regiment Armory (1880) and the H.O. Havemeyer house (1890; destroyed). In 1892 he founded the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, which specialized in producing stained-glass windows and glass mosaics. By this time he was also producing blown glass for both decorative and table-service use, and in 1893 he established his own furnaces for this purpose. The company was reorganized into Tiffany Studios in 1900.

In the following years, Tiffany produced jewelry, enamels, pottery, lamps, glass, mosaics, and monumental stained-glass windows. He built a palatial home, Laurelton Hall, at Oyster Bay, Long Island, which overshadowed in luxury and visual impact his several residences in New York City. In 1918 Tiffany gave Laurelton Hall (destroyed) to the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, which administered a fellowship program for young artists. The Tiffany firm was not disbanded until 3 years after its founder's death on Jan. 17, 1933.

Autumn Landscape was commissioned by Loren Delbert Towle for his Gothic Revival mansion in Boston. It was meant to light a grand staircase, and by presenting a landscape view that faded into the distance, create the illusion of extending a confined space. Towle died before the window could be installed, and it was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Many of the works that Tiffany created are available for you to see online. Please click on the title of this blog entry to find museums that have collections of his work.

Books about Tiffany are available at the Greenwood County Library. You may find books about the art of stained glass along with patterns and projects for you to create on your own. Learn more about this fascinating artist and his work at the Library.

N. C. Wyeth and The Last of the Mohicans

Cover illustration of The Last of the Mohicans

Newell Convers Wyeth was an American artist and illustrator. Born in 1882 in Needham, Massachusetts, his mother encouraged him to develop his artistic talent. He studied with Howard Pyle aat Pyle's School of Art, and became his star pupil.

Pyle encouraged his students to paint from experience, and Wyeth hiked and camped in the woods in the Lake George region of New York (the setting of The Last of the Mohicans) to prepare for his illustrations. The figure above is of Uncas, one of the last of the Mohican tribe and the great friend of Hawkeye, the main character. Wyeth's illustrations of the novel did much to create an enduring image of the American Indian as a "noble savage."

To learn more about N. C. Wyeth, visit the library to check out his biography and see other books that he illustrated.

John James Audubon, American Artist

John James Audubon was born in Haiti, educated in France, and spent most of his life in the United States. He moved his family to the U. S. to manage a farm outside of Philadelphia, but he lost it through neglect. Putting that failure behind him, he began the monumental task of depicting every bird native to North America. He published Birds of America, a four volume set of hand colored engravings, from 1826 - 1838. Here we see American Flamingo. Audubon would study and sketch a bird in its natural habitat and then kill it carefully to minimize the damage. Then he would thread wire through its body which would allow him to fashion a lifelike pose.

Audubon wanted his work to be useful to both professional and amateur ornithologists, so he portrayed his subjects at eye level. We can see the distinctive markings of the bird and its spindly legs, webbed toes, long neck, and hooked beak.

Visit the Library to find books by and about this fascinating artist and naturalist.

Sans Arc Lakota Ledger Book, 1880 - 1881 by Black Hawk

About the artist, Black Hawk

Black Hawk was a spiritual leader of the Lakota Sioux. During the winter of 1880 - 1881, he had difficulty feeding his family, and he accepted William Edward Caton's offer of .50 in trade for every drawing he made of a dream. He produced 76 drawings and received $38, a good amount for the time. His ledger book was sold at auction in 1994 to a private collector for almost $400,000. Black Hawk is believed to have been killed at Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1890.

Crow Warriors

Below we see Crow warriors in procession, recognizable by their hairsytle. The men wore their hair with a short tuft swept up at the front and in long plaits augmented with extensions and daubs of clay down the back. Known for their beauty, the Crow were the traditional enemies of the Lakota.

Lakota Dance

In the painting below, we see Lakota men and women performing a social dance. The men wear quill and feather ornaments in their hair while the women have their parts painted red or yellow. The most expensive dress is worn by the fourth figure from the right, and is decorated with rows of elk eye teeth, the only two teeth that are ivory.