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Cynthia L Zeedyk |
Berry Baskets All about Cynthia Zeedyk's Primitive Bark Baskets |
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| Super Size Berry Basket Aspen Bark body with salt cedar wooden handle- secured from top to bottom inside closure.. These large baskets are the most rare of all pieces produced each year. We rarely harvest a piece of bark large, and perfect enough to become a 2 to 5 foot tall basket. In such a case, the basket's diameter is approximately 44 to 52 inches around.. They can hold 15 gallons or more of berries. Although the basket pictured here is very large, Cynthia recalls seeing an article in an old book where a woman is inside the berry basket. |
| Bark Berry Baskets An Ancient Legend A Lost Art Once, many moons ago, a young Cherokee girl was going home to her family after spending many hours gathering berries enough to fill her new bark basket. Everyone would be able to eat berries for dinner. The walk was long and difficult, so the young girl carefully held onto her berry basket so she would not lose a single one of the beautiful red raspberries she had found at the edge of the forest. A new fawn lay hidden beneath a small spicebush. She could see its spots clearly as she walked along the trail towards her village. A noisy squirrel ran from branch to branch, jumping from one tree to the next as if it had its own path among the oak branches and the pines. The girl could smell smoke and meat in the distance, and her footsteps quickened. Her mother would be happy that she had gathered so many plump berries. Her basket was full and smelled so good. The juice from the raspberries began to drip out of the corners where she put the berry basket together. As she walked faster, she knew the muddy creek bed would be a fun finish to a day in the woods. The little Cherokee girl hopped along the rocks that crossed the creek bed. Oowwieeeeaaaaah!!!. A rock spirit did not like being in the river. It got mad and pounced on her biggest toe! The mud spirits tried to pull her moccasins, and grabbed her feet and legs. She landed flat on her face and her bark basket was crushed. Her deerskin dress was covered in a blue soggy cold and slimy goo that the mud spirits left for the Creator to dig in. All around her, scattered all over the blue mud, was her raspberries. Plump, ripe berries that were turning her tears into rubies. Her dress and black hair were full of mud too. She began to sob. Her tears were many. The berries were ruined. Mud spirits felt her warm salty tears. There she knelt, crying. The mud spirits felt sorry for her, and came from the earth , and showed her how to make a clay pot. (According to this legend, the bark basket came long before the clay pot. Perhaps in this, we discover the basket for its useful place in indigenous cultures, its value as a primitive grocery sack, and an "on the spot" made to order emergency carryall.) |
| Artfully Eccentric Berry Baskets These specialty pieces are created from baskets that are cream of the crop for each year. We design and embellish each brim with hand picked semiprecious stones as well as using either yucca leaves, or weaving the brim with jute twine. Sizes for these specialty pieces run approximately 7 to 15 inches tall, and 14 to 30 inches in diameter. We can finish these pieces as a special order in a choice of available partially completed baskets and semiprecious stones. There are never any two harvesting and production years that are the same, so please contact us to check availability, and ordering needs for your special work. |
| In the era that these baskets were used for gathering nuts and berries, the baskets would only have been embellished with a utilitarian brim. There would not have been any with intricate tops as the ones shown above are finished. These baskets were the first grocery bags. When someone returned from gathering fruit or other food items, the baskets were thrown into the fire! Bark is an absorbent fiber that decays quickly if left exposed to the elements. Unfortunately, this quality makes it a rarity to find baskets created earlier than the 1800's. This primitive art form has been passed down orally, by legend, family, and friend. It has also been referenced in many artisan and craft books. The Institute of Native American Art of Santa Fe teaches its students about bark basketry in their educational programs. Historic written references to these baskets and their makers have been found in the National Library of Congress dating back to the 1800's. These bark baskets, and other similarly styled baskets, can be found around the country and also in various parts of the world. ------------ Bark berry basket making is a very limited and endangered art form, as are the artisans and storytellers who carry this ancient craft along into this new century. ---------------- Currently, there is an historian who collects, stories and legends of both living basket makers, and ones who have passed. Our honored historian is Bill Alexander, of the eastern Tennessee area.. Mr. Alexander is an Appalachian Artisan, Author, Poet, and Basket Maker. |
| Traditionally, these primitive bark baskets have been created using the bark of the Tulip Poplar tree. According to the natural bounties each area of this great earth holds, we now create these handcrafted baskets from the bark of the Quaking Aspen. Cynthia L Zeedyk relocated from the eastern United States in 1999, to the high desert in the Southern Rocky Mountains of New Mexico. She has carried with her the art of primitive bark basketry mastered while living and studying Arts in the Appalachian Mountains. Creating Small Wonders The process of creating each basket requires weeks, and even months of individual care and attention from the starting point of hand picking just the right trees for the baskets, at an elevation of nine thousand feet and up. From that point on, each and every basket is created with blood, sweat, and tears. Felling a tree with a handsaw is one of the harder aspects of basket making. We harvest the bark using only a hand saw, linoleum knife, and a small green stick fashioned into a chisel. This chisel, called a spud, is fashioned so it can separate the bark from the log without damaging the inside layers of bark. The harvesting cannot be done by machine due to the irregularities in the bark fiber and branching patterns of each tree. While the bark is still wet and pliable, the baskets must be cut and fashioned into their permanent shape and size, before the bark has a chance to cure. This race against time is hampered by the lack of humidity in the air, and the effort required in harvesting bark with manual tools. We spend one week in camp harvesting as much bark as we are able in the few days we have before the bark dries. It is necessary to cover the rolls of harvested bark with tarps and cloth, as well as pouring water on it to keep it moist during the week's work. We break camp, then travel 81 miles home to begin the race to get baskets cut and shaped before drying occurs. While the bark is drying into the desired shape of a basket, we will travel another 40 to 80 miles to the Rio Grande River basin to collect branches from the very unwelcome shrub; Salt Cedar, and also the Creek Willow. These branches will be soaked for one to two weeks while they are being formed into handles for the larger sized baskets. The peeled logs are recycled for fence posts, kivas, and furniture. Each tree we cut during this time in the growing season, leaves enough of the original tree stump to begin new growth. Our harvested trees are given a chance to regrow. In this way we have not killed the trees, only thinned out immediate areas of bark harvesting. Cynthia Zeedyk's primitive bark baskets are each individually handcrafted. No two baskets can be precisely duplicated; they can be similar in size and shape, but the bark fiber grows on each tree as if it were the tree's own fingerprint. |
| Aspen bark berry basket with yucca leaf brim. This style of basket is created in the traditional design. -------------------- The original fibers to finish these baskets with a brim reinforcing the top was made with a strip of green hickory bark .The fiber used to finish stringing it could have been whatever was immediately available from the area such as; honeysuckle vine, hickory bark twisted into string, cattail leaves, reeds, leather strips, sinew, and then in later years came bailing twine. With Cynthia's basket artistry , totaling 25,000 plus baskets produced, has put to the test the strength of many different natural fibers. Jute twine proved to be the strongest fiber for finishing these unique bark baskets. |
| High Mountains near Pecos River, New Mexico |
| Peeled aspen logs stacked and ready for use |
| Cut and formed basket beginnings. Ready to complete |
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