Corn basket variation: Rocky Keezer w/turquoise accents

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Corn basket variation: Rocky Keezer w/turquoise accents

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Sold Date: 11/30/2007
Channel: Online Auction
Source: eBay
Category: Ethnic, Folk & Native American Art

At present Rocky Keezer is in poor health and is only helping apprentices to make baskets. This is one of his last nicely made baskets and I think it is a great one! He has used his mother Clara's corn basket mold, but done something entirely different.

This basket is 5.5" long and 2.75" top diameter, 1.5" diameter at the bottom

The foundation of the basket is brown ash splints, the traditional material of Maine and Eastern Canadian basketmakers and top of the lid is woven with tightly and finely braided tidal sweetgrass. The rim of the overhanging lid is wrapped with plain tidal sweetgrass. This is grass found in the tidal marshes near the Pleasant Point home of the Keezers. The grass was harvested in the late summer by Rocky, then dried and braided by his aunt, now deceased, Edith Pond - whose sweetgrass braids were among the most perfectly done I have ever found. The use of tidal sweetgrass in baskets was highly valued at the turn of the last century when traders and customers would pay a premium for baskets which had quantities of sweetgrass - such as this

You may know that Rocky is the son of Clara Keezer, who was a winner of a NEA 2002 Heritage Fellowship award for her basketry work. According to the NEA website, this award is "the country's highest honor in the folk and traditional art" -... and includes all folk arts and crafts including but not limited to - music, dance, performance art and traditional crafts and arts. Both Clara and Rocky's baskets appear in a Smithsonian exhibit and book. NOTE: Rocky is currently in poor health and for the past year or 18 months has been working on baskets with apprentices and not working much on his own. I had put this in my own collection after it was listed in this store for a couple of months last year. I now am running out of room, and I have a similar corn variation basket by Rocky (different curl style) and so am "culling" this one. You know if I had chosen this piece, it is a good piece! This is listed for less than I had it for last year and appears in the CLEARANCE section of the store as well. The corn basket form is one that dates back at least 110 years. The original corn baskets were long and may have been used to hold knitting needles. Rocky called this his 1/2 corn and I will list another "full" corn that is about 12" long. The curl style o this is one that I first saw on Rocky's watermelon baskets. It was what he used to make the black sees on the slice of red watermelon --- so I call this curl style a "Seed curl" ... it is really just 1 standard 1/2 diamond curl in reverse twist. Rocky says it's just "my weird curl" ... And the color, deep turquoise, is a typical Rocky color - he likes to use bright colors and it is quite effective. The unusual form (he only made 2 other 1/2 corn basket variations that I know of) and this being one of Rocky's last good baskets (to date) make it more interesting I think. I am hoping Rocky recovers to make many more great baskets - and does so soon.

Check out corn baskets that are not "variations" but baskets meant to look like ears of corn elsew in my ebay store... I have some full size, some small and some min-corn baskets ... In a variety of colors/types - from yellow/cream "butter & sugar" corn to "Hopi Blue" corn and "Abenaki Red."

The slideshow also includes a picture of Rocky taken last December and a picture of the 3 Keezer basketmakers, Clara and sons Kenny and Rocky taken during my October 2006 "Basketmakers of the Dawn" Tour.

Would you be interested in meeting Clara Keezer, and perhaps her sons both Rocky and Kenny along with many of the best working Maine Indian basketmakers? email me about my spring or fall 2008 "Basketmakers of the Dawn" tours - We will also be visiting Maine museums and viewing private collections of antique Maine/Eastern Canadian baskets.