Doctor's Basket, Canoe- shaped (1890): Art, History and Details

Doctor's Basket, Canoe- shaped (1890) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Oblong baskets like this one, which range in size from miniatures to examples more than four feet long, are sometimes said to have been used by native doctors to store medicines and paraphernalia such as rattles. This one, however, probably was made not for native use but for sale to a turn-of-the-century collector.

Object facts

• Title: Doctor's Basket, Canoe- shaped
• Date: 1890
• Culture: California, Pomo, 19th century
• Type: Basketry
• Technique: coiled, with shell and yellow glass beads
• Dimensions: Overall: 14.5 x 44 cm (5 11/16 x 17 5/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Native North America
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1917.480

Collection credit

Presented by William Albert Price in memory of Mrs. William Albert Price

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 4, no. 4 (1917): 64-67.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.