The Pomo Basket Display at Lake Sonoma's Visitor Center

I decided to take a quick jaunt over to Lake Sonoma today and see if I could find anything worth snapping a few photos of...

Lake Sonoma is a man-made lake created when a dam was built by the Army Corps of Engineers across a canyon in Sonoma County's "Dry Creek Valley" back in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, the entire site had been the spot that generations of Pomo and Miwok Indians for thousands of years had traditionally obtained some of their particular basket-making rushes and reeds. 

I had a friend who was an archeology and anthropology professor at Sonoma State College for many years until he passed away from cancer several years ago. He spear-headed a program that was totally unique at the time and supervised the digging up of many of the native plants that the Pomos used in basket weaving that were due to be innundated by the new lake and relocated them to higher ground so that the Pomos and Miwoks could continue their incredible art...

Pomo baskets are known as being some of the finest and most artistic baskets in the world and the visitor center at Lake Sonoma had some great examples:

Of course the Pomo basket makers always made many, many baskets that were (and are) quite  utilitarian in nature and use; however, their "gift baskets" that were usually made as "novelties" and given away as presents to especially beloved friends and relatives -- is where their incredible creativity in this medium really SHONE!

I had a dear friend whom I lost to cancer several years ago who was a full-blooded Pomo Indian and her aunts, mother and grandmother were master basket weavers... Her grandmother could weave extremely tiny baskets that would just barely fit over the heads of SEWING PINS!

Here is a photo that I took today of one of the more "difficult" baskets  to make (according to my friend's aunt) -- called a "canoe basket"... Difficult to make because, supposedly, it's very tricky to keep the sides just flattened enough without flatting them TOO MUCH:

(This basket was about 2 inches long and about 3/4 of an inch wide...)

Here is a much larger example of a Pomo basket from the Visitor Center's museum at Lake Sonoma... The pattern is called "Hills and Valleys":

  

(This basket was about 6 or 7 inches in diameter...HUGE by Pomo standards!)

Here are some of the tiny miniature baskets that I'm more used to seeing from the deft hands of the Pomo basket weavers:

(The little ones on the extreme right were about 1/2 an inch in diameter!)

But this next photo shows the pinnacle of Pomo basketry called a "Moon Basket" -- always heavily decorated with shells, beads and feathers!

This one has triangles of abalone shell, olivet shell rounds and glass beads...

Simply GORGEOUS!!!

 OH! and those green, metallic-looking feathers you see worked into the weave?

They come  from HUMMINGBIRDS!!!

"Moon baskets" are always "hanging baskets" (notice the pieces of twine attached to the top...) and there's a reason for this which has to do with a legend about Coyote stealing the Moon and Sun from a sweatlodge and then hanging each of them up in order for night and day...

All in all, it was an enjoyable and interesting little display...