Basket (Picnic basket)

Description

This picnic basket (lids now lost) is made with the traditional material of birchbark with the bark's inner reddish brown surface reversed to serve as the exterior. The basket is enlivened with animal, bird, and tree images using a picture writing style of making lighter-color linear designs by removing some of the surface. These include a humorous scene on a long side showing a hunter held captive by his prey: deer have stolen his bow and treed him. The owl sitting on a branch on one of the basket’s ends had a personal meaning to Maine's best-known birchbark artist, Tomah Joseph. Joseph, a Passamaquoddy leader, also provided guided recreational experiences for tourists who began flocking to Maine in the 1910s and 20s. Joseph's most famous client was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a distant relative of Henry Francis du Pont who also summered in Maine.