Baskets of the 19th and 20th centuries form the heart of the museum's Native American ethnographic collections. Centering on the Far West, they comprise about 1500 items, representing Oregon tribes, as well as those from adjacent regions, including Washington, California, the Southwest, Great Basin, British Columbia, and Alaska. The Museum's more than 200 Klamath baskets have recently become the focus of a University of Oregon Master's project by Klamath tribal member Gordon Bettles, and have been photo-documented by Roger Scott as part of the museum's extensive digitizing effort.
Exceptional for its range of forms and designs, the collection also represents a continuous link to archaeological weavings thousands of years old, found in dry caves of the nearby High Desert. A small sampling of the baskets is presented here with information drawn from Bettles’ research.
. (This will open a new browser window)