Nancy Bradley

Nancy Bradley

Artisans

Basket makers

Cherokee baskets

Cherokee women

Manners and customs

This 1937 photograph of Nancy George Bradley (1881-1963) was made Chattanooga photographer W. M. Cline. Bradley is shown holding a rivercane basket in her lap. Few baskets made by Nancy Bradley are known to exist, although word of her work is legendary. Both her mother, Mary Dobson (b. 1857) and her daughter, Rowena Bradley (1922-2003) were accomplished basket weavers. Some claim that Nancy George Bradley (1881-1963) was one of only two basket weavers who kept the Cherokee double weave tradition alive. According to her daughter, Nancy Bradley made baskets six days a week, tied them in a sheet, and then walked to town to sell or trade baskets for groceries. She was married to Principal Chief Henry Bradley; the couple had eight children and lived in the Big Cove community near Cherokee, North Carolina. Nancy Bradley spoke Cherokee, not English.

Cline, W. M.

Photograph Collection

Hunter Library Digital Collections, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723

1937

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

jpg;

photographs

StillImage

11117

https://southernappalachiandigitalcollections.org/object/11117

2009-03-03

All rights reserved. For permissions and use, contact Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc., Cherokee, NC 28719;

Qualla Boundary

Appalachian Region, Southern

7" x 5"(dimension)

Cherokee Traditions