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Showing posts with label pandanus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pandanus. Show all posts

Tribal Art from our private collection

Poking around in our personal collection, we have turned up a couple of items never before presented to our public.

One Australian Aboriginal item is a beautiful, round, hand-woven basket done in pandanus fiber, with a firmly fitting lid, a four-coil handle and rosettes on each side. We acquired it in Cairns, at the Capricorn Gallery.

At the time, it was highly regarded by the gallery owner, as an outstanding example of the basket-weaving tradition and skills of the Australian Aboriginal artisans from the Oenpelli/Kakadu region of the Northern Territory.

The size is 10" high by 13" in diameter.

Unfortunately, the name of the basket weaver has been lost to the ages.

Pandanus is a common plant fiber from the Australian outback and top end, that is used for basket making. Colors are achieved by dying the fibers with natural ochres, ground into a fine powder and boiled in water.

This basket is a true expression of Australian Aboriginal culture and art in a functional piece. It is possible to be moved by the spirit when looking at it and feeling the quality of the weaving.

A second item from Aboriginal Australia is this carving of a parrot. We believe it was created by an Aborigine artist from Groote Eylandt, a sizable island to the north of the Australian mainland in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The Blitners are a well-known family of artists from Groote Eylandt and we feel one of them could have been the creator of this remarkable piece.

Groote Eylandt is occupied by the Warnindhilyagwa people. It received its unusual name when named by Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman. Groote Eylandt is archaic Dutch for Large Island.

Regional cultures within Australia can vary widely in their traditions and art styles. The somewhat rough quality of this carving suggests it is rather old piece, although we can not attest to its age. We find it very powerful, reflecting portrayal from a time when parrots were important totems in Northern Australia. It is one of our favorite vintage pieces, standing 26" high with a 4.5" diameter at the base. Colors were achieved using natural ochres, kaolin and charcoal.

Eventually, both of these items will find their way to our web site. If you are interested n acquiring either of them, please visit us at TribalWorks.com and navigate to the Australian Room.

You are always welcome.

Tribal art - Nine baskets you've never seen before

Just about every culture with access to vegetation has had a basket-making history. Among them are the Aborigines of Central Australia.

With little or no resources for pottery-making, a nomadic lifestyle that required regular movement from campsite to campsite and extensive pandanus fiber resources, Australian Aborigines have a rich and vital basket-making tradition.

Even today, at least as recently as the 1990s, Aborigines were weaving baskets for everyday needs such as gathering foods, carrying possessions and even providing shelter for children, and for sale to basket and ethnographic art collectors.



Pandanus fiber, ochres,
dyed emu feathers


Beautiful, colorful, intricately woven baskets are produced by hand throughout Aboriginal Australia. Some the most striking are created in the Northern Territory area of Arnhem Land, served by art and cultural centers at Maningrida and Nhulumbuy.

The baskets are predominantly coiled, string or "dilly" bags. They are woven from various natural fibers such as those made from the leaves of the pandanus plant, the bark of trees like Kurrajong, Brachychiton diversifolius, Brachychiton paradoxum and Ficus virens.

These fibers are dyed in vivid oranges, yellows, reds, blacks and purples by boiling in ground up roots of plants like Pogonolobus reticulatus and wood ash from Eucalyptus alba.

Maningrida is a small community that sits on the remote northern coast of Australia's Arnhem Land at the estuary of the Liverpool River. During much of the year the community can be reached only by light aircraft. Nhulumbuy, also known as Gove, is an area where bauxite has been mined. It also situated on the northern coast and is reachable primarily by air, especially during the wet season.

We acquired several Australian Aboriginal baskets for our personal collection starting in 1990, in villages and towns of the Northern Territory. We have decided (reluctantly) to release these baskets for sale. You can learn more about them, which are shown in thumbnails below, and access a larger photograph of each, by clicking on each image.

W762 dilly bag

KC40 emu feather basket

CC20 dilly bag

W036 collecting bag

W764 collecting bag

W824 parrot feather bag

K128 canoe shape basket

W826 collecting basket and child cover

You may see these and other Australian Aboriginal baskets at our TribalWorks online gallery. We invite you to visit and share our passion for the ingenious weaving of these resourceful people.