In lattice construction a frame made of two or three layers of passive standards is bound together by wrapping the intersections with a thread. The ways of intertwining hardly vary at all and the commonest is also the simplest: the threads are wrapped in a spiral around two layers of standards. This method is widely used throughout the world in making strong, fairly rigid objects for daily use: partitions for dwellings, baskets to be carried on the back, cages, and fish traps (with a Mediterranean variety composed of three layers of standards and a knotted thread). The same method, moreover, can be adapted for decorative purposes, with threads—often of different colours—to form a variety of motifs similar to embroidery. This kind of lattice construction appears mainly among the Makah Indians of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and in Central and East Africa.
Matting or plaited construction
Standards and threads are indistinguishable in matting or plaited construction; they are either parallel and perpendicular to the edge (straight basketry) or oblique (diagonal basketry). Such basketry is closest to textile weaving. The materials used are almost always woven, using the whole gamut of weaving techniques (check, twill, satin, and innumerable decorative combinations). Depending on the material and on the technique used, this type of construction lends itself to a wide variety of forms, in particular to the finest tiny boxes and to the most artistic large plane surfaces. It is widely distributed but seems particularly well adapted to the natural resources and to the kind of life found in intertropical areas. The regions where it is most common are different from, and complementary with, those specializing in coiled and twined ware; that is, eastern and southeastern Asia (from Japan to Malaysia and Indonesia), tropical America, and the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa.
One variety of matting or plaited work consists of three or four layers of elements, which are in some cases completely woven and in others form an intermediate stage between woven and lattice basketry. The intermediate type (with two layered elements, one woven) is known as hexagonal openwork and is the technique most common in openwork basketry using flat elements. It has a very wide distribution: from Europe to Japan, southern Asia, Central Africa, and the tropical Americas. A closely woven fabric in three layers, forming a six-pointed star design, is found on a small scale in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Decorative devices
Clearly, a variety of decorative possibilities arise from the actual work of constructing basketry. These, combined with the possible contrasts of colour and texture, would seem to provide extensive decorative possibilities. Each particular type of basketry, however, imposes certain limitations, which may lead to convergent effects: hexagonal openwork, for example, forms the same pattern the world over, just as twilled weaving forms the same chevrons (vertical or horizontal). Each type, also, allows a certain range of freedom in the decoration within the basic restrictions imposed by the rigidity of the interlaced threads, which tends to impose geometric designs or at least to geometrize the motifs. In general, the two main types of basketry—plaited and coiled—lend themselves to two different kinds of decoration. Coiled basketry lends itself to radiating designs, generally star- or flower-shaped compositions or whirling designs sweeping from the centre to the outer edge. Plaited basketry, whether diagonal or straight, lends itself to over-all compositions of horizontal stripes and, in the detail, to intertwined shapes that result from the way two series of threads, usually in contrasting colours, appear alternately on the surface of the basket.
Other art forms have been influenced ornamentally by basketry’s plaited shapes and characteristic motifs. Because of their intrinsic decorative value—and not because the medium dictates it—these shapes and motifs have been reproduced in such materials as wood, metal, and clay. Some notable examples are the interlacing decorations carved on wood in the Central African Congo; basketry motifs engraved into metalwork and set off with inlayed silver by Frankish artisans in the Merovingian period (6th to 8th century); and osier patterns (molded basketwork designs) developed in 18th-century Europe to decorate porcelain.
Uses
Household basketry objects consist primarily of receptacles for preparing and serving food and vary widely in dimension, shape, and watertightness. Baskets are used the world over for serving dry food, such as fruit and bread, and they are also used as plates and bowls. Sometimes—if made waterproof by a special coating or by particularly close plaiting—they are used as containers for liquids. Such receptacles are found in various parts of Europe and Africa (Chad, Rwanda, Ethiopia) and among several groups of North American Indians. By dropping hot stones into the liquid, the Hupa Indians of northwestern California even boil water or food in baskets.
Openwork, which is permeable and can be made with mesh of various sizes, is used for such utensils as sieves, strainers, and filters. Such basketry objects are used in the most primitive cultures as well as in the most modern (the tea strainers used in Japan, for example). The flexibility of work done on the diagonal is put to particularly ingenious use by the Africans in beer making and, above all, by Amazonian Indians in extracting the toxic juices from manioc pulp (a long basketwork cylinder is pulled down at the bottom by ballasting and, as it gets longer, compresses the pulp with which it had previously been filled).
Finally, basketry plays an important part as storage containers. For personal possessions, there are baskets, boxes, and cases of all kinds—nested boxes from Madagascar, for example, which are made in a graduated series so that they fit snugly one within another, or caskets with multiple compartments from Indonesia. For provisions, there are baskets in various sizes that can be hung up out of the reach of predators, and there are baskets so large that they are used as granaries. In Sudan in Africa, as in southern Europe, these are usually raised off the ground on a platform and sheltered by a large roof or stored in the house, particularly in Mediterranean regions; for preserving cereals they are sometimes caulked with clay.
Some of these granaries are not far from being houses. Basketry used in house construction, however, usually consists of separately made elements that are later assembled; partitions of varying degrees of rigidity used as walls or to fence in an enclosure; roofs made of great basketry cones (in Chad, for example); and, above all, mats, which have numerous uses in the actual construction as well as in the equipping of a house. Probably the oldest evidence of basketry is the mud impressions of woven mats that covered the floors of houses in the Neolithic (c. 7000 bce) village of Jarmo in northern Iraq. Mats were used in ancient Egypt to cover floors and walls and were also rolled up and unrolled in front of doorways, as is shown by stone replicas decorating the doorways of tombs dating from the Old Kingdom, c. 2686–2160 bce. It is known from paintings that they were made of palm leaves and were decorated with polychrome (multicoloured) stripes, much like the mats found in Africa and the Near East.
Two notable examples of modern mats are the pliant ones, made of pandanus leaves, found in southern Asia and Oceania and the tatami, which provide the unit of measurement of the surface area of Japanese dwellings. Just as basketry has been used for making containers and mats, so from ancient times to modern it has been used for making such pieces of furniture as cradles, beds, tables, and various kinds of seats and cabinets.
In addition to the use of basketry for skirts and loincloths (particularly common in Oceania), supple diagonal plaiting has even been used to make dresses (Madagascar). Plaited raincoats exist throughout eastern Asia as well as Portugal. Basketry most frequently is used for shoes (particularly sandals, some of which come close to covering the foot and are plaited in various materials), and, of course, for hats—the conical hat particularly common in eastern Asia, for example, and the skullcaps and brimmed hats found in Africa, the Americas, and much of Europe.
To protect head and body against weapons, thick, strong basketry has been used in the form of helmets (Africa, the Assam region in India, and Hawaii); armour (for example, armour of coconut palm fibre for protection against weapons made of sharks’ teeth by the Micronesia inhabitants of the Gilbert Islands); and shields, for which basketry is eminently suitable because of its lightness. In addition to clothes themselves, there are numerous basketry accessories: small purses, combs, headdresses, necklaces, bracelets, and anklets. In West Africa there are even chains made of fine links and pendants plaited in a beautiful, bright yellow straw in imitation of gold jewelry. Many objects are plaited just for decoration or amusement such as ornaments like those used for Christmas trees or for harvest festivals and scale models and little animal or human figurines that sometimes serve as children’s toys.
There is often no very clear distinction between accessories and ritual ornaments, as in the ephemeral headdresses made for initiation rites by the young Masa people in the Cameroon; dance accessories; ornaments for masks, such as the leaf masks that the Bobo of Upper Volta make with materials from the bush.
More clearly ritual in nature are the palms (woven into elaborate geometric shapes and liturgical symbols) carried in processions on Palm Sunday by Christians in various Mediterranean regions; some, like those from Elche in Spain, are over six feet (nearly two metres) high and take days to make. In Bali an infinite variety of plaiting techniques are involved in the preparation of ritual offerings, which is a permanent occupation for the women, a hundred of whom may work for a month or two preparing for certain great festivals.
Baskets are used throughout the world as snares and fish traps, which allow the catch to enter but not to leave. They are often used in conjunction with a corral (on land) or a weir (an enclosure set in the water), which are themselves made either of pliable nets or panels of basketry. In Africa as well as in eastern Asia a basketry object is used for fishing in shallow water; open at top and bottom, this object is deposited sharply on the bottom of shallow rivers or ponds, and, when a fish is trapped, it is retrieved by putting a hand in through the opening at the top.
Basketry is also used in harvesting foodstuffs; for example, in the form of winnowing trays (from whose French name, van, the French word for basketry, vannerie, is derived). One basket, found in the Sahel region south of the Sahara, is swung among wild grasses and in knocking against the stalks collects the grain.
Baskets are used as transport receptacles; they are made easier to carry by the addition of handles or straps depending on whether the basket is carried by hand, on a yoke, or on the back. The two-handled palm-leaf basket, common in North Africa and the Middle East, existed in ancient Mesopotamia; in Europe and eastern Asia, the one-handled basket, which comes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and types of plaiting, is common; in Africa, however, where burdens are generally carried on the head, there is no difference between baskets used for transporting goods and those used for storing.
Burden baskets are large, deep baskets in which heavy loads can be carried on the back; they are provided either with a headband that goes across the forehead (especially American Indian, southern Asia), or with two straps that go over the shoulders (especially in Southeast Asia and Indonesia). There are three fairly spectacular types of small basketry craft found in regions as far apart as Peru, Ireland, and Mesopotamia: the balsa (boats) of Lake Titicaca, made of reeds and sometimes fitted out with a sail also made of matting; the British coracle, the basketry framework of which is covered with a skin sewn onto the edge; and the gufa of the Tigris, which is round like the coracle and made of plaited reeds caulked with bitumen.
