Coiled Basket Baleen
date: label: Accession Date
content: 27 Apr 1935
name: label: Donor Name
content: Mary M. Walcott
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Cylindrical; provided with detachable lid; ivory insets at center of bottom and center of lid; plain." Illus. Fig. 42, p. 44 in Fitzhugh, William W., and Aron Crowell. 1988. Crossroads of continents: cultures of Siberia and Alaska. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Identified there: "Baleen basket, North Alaskan Eskimo. The first baleen basket was made at Barrow, Alaska, about 1915 (Lee 1983), after the end of the whaling era. This event resulted from a request by Charles Brower, an American whaler and trader, to Kingutuk, a local Barrow man, to make a baleen copy of a willowroot basket. The result was so popular that baleen baskets soon became a North Alaskan trademark and a favorite item in the tourist trade. Baleen baskets are made with a single rod core and have ivory finials ornamented, generally, with arctic animals. This basket has a whale tail finial and a fossil ivory starter disc on its bottom."
label: Record Last Modified
content: 7 Jul 2021
label: Specimen Count
content: 2
place: label: Place
content: Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 134246
label: USNM Number
content: E372667-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Basket