Basket: white oak, shopper

Basket: white oak, shopper

Basket making

Cherokee baskets

Handicraft

This Indian Arts and Crafts Board photograph was most likely taken for a 1977 exhibition of Elsie Watty's white oak baskets at Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual artisan cooperative in Cherokee. The body of this shopping basket, dyed with walnut root and bloodroot, is 7" x 11" x 4.5". Elsie Welch Watty (1935-2016) was a master Cherokee basket weaver who specialized in making white oak baskets and was known for creating her own designs. She was born in 1935 and lived and worked on the Galamore Branch in the Big Cove community near Cherokee. Although her mother and grandmother each wove baskets, neither of them taught her the craft. Instead, she learned by observation and began to make baskets when she was ten years old. While she was an active basket weaver, she is said to have made 100 baskets a year.

United States. Indian Arts and Crafts Board

Watty, Elsie Welch, 1935-

Photograph Collection

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

1976/1977

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

jpg;

photographs

StillImage

15901

https://southernappalachiandigitalcollections.org/object/15901

2009-01-13

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

Qualla Boundary

Appalachian Region, Southern

8" x 10"(dimension)

Craft Revival