Basket

Description

This hinge-lidded basket is part of a distinctive group of baskets with painted floral decoration that were especially popular during the nineteenth century among Americans of German ancestry. Some antiques market publications erroneously referred to such family keepsakes as Chinese rice straw baskets, but they are typical of willow baskets made in Upper Franconia (a region in Bavaria). The Bavarian basket industry produced thousands of colorfully painted baskets for export to the United States from about the 1820s until 1870s. A paper label glued to this basket's lid was written by John B. Becker (1864-1929) from the town of Oregon, Pennsylvania. John's wife Annie Loretta Moyer (1868-1928) inherited this basket from her mother, Annie Moyer, who previously had inherited it from her mother Sarah Stuck. In 1929 John Becker presented the basket to his granddaughter Anna Becker “for Remembrance.”