A small Plum Basket by Pam Cunningham, master Penobscot basketmaker. - It's intriguing and very realistic ripe plum color comes from a mulberry dye Pam prepared for dying wool - ... Pam's very first Plum baskets sold out quickly - JUST IN - another of these gorgeous plums!
This Plum basket by Pam is of mulberry dyed ash splints with dyed green leaves and thin curly vines atop the lid. This is covered with 70 small round "curlicue" curls. (The curls get smaller at the bottom of the basket) It is 1.75" to top of basket lid, 1.5" diameter at lid - rounded at center to 1.75" diameter and slightly tapered to bottom of basket which is 1" diameter. The small handle/stem of green dyed ash wrapped ash splint is 1/2" long making total height of this basket 2.25". Pam places 8 green dyed ash "leaves" as the top of this Plum. On the inner rim of the lid Pam has signed "Pam outdusis" and added the date, 2022. (outdusis is Pam's Penobscot name, it means "Little Pathway" Third to last photo in the slideshow above shows 2 plums of a variety that is the same color and shape as this "Little Plum" by Pam outdusis Cunningham.
Made of brown ash, the traditional material of Maine and Eastern Canadian basketmakers, this has plain tidal sweetgrass wrapping the rim of the basket and lid. This uses mulberry and green dyed ash.
There are more of Pam's beloved basket styles in this website's store, You might find a few different little corn basket varieties, strawberry basket, pinecones, blueberries, pumpkins, prayer baskets, sewing baskets, spectacular sea urchin baskets....
Last photo is a pic of Pam's great-grandmother, ssipsis, selling her baskets about 1920. To make some of her basket forms Pam uses some of her ssipsis's basket making tools - gauges, crooked knives and wooden molds. To learn more about Pam - check out her short biography in the "Bio" section of this website
