If the modern household was suddenly deprived of the use of paper sacks, metal pails, cardboard boxes, shopping bags, plastic buckets, tubs, and other modern containers, one would have some idea of what our ancestors' predicament would have been without the common basket. And when one considers that the need for containers in a farm setting was many times greater than that of most modern homes, he may appreciate the importance of the basket in the lives of our ancestors.

There is likely no way to statistically document the extent to which the basket was used by our Appalachian forebears. But I recall working with his parents, grandparents, and neighbors in the 1930's in rural Appalachia, and my observations indicate that its use was widespread, continuous, and almost indispensable to the performance of daily chores.

I remember that every morning and every evening, my brother David and I would get our large baskets and go from stable to stable feeding the horses and mules the long ears of corn through the log cracks--six ears to the mule Kate, eight ears to the Spike the horse, and so on. We also used baskets to carry corn to the old sows and for the many fattening hogs.

Women in earlier times used baskets in connect with spinning and weaving, for such purposes as picking cotton, storing wool, feathers, etc. There were lunch baskets, picnic baskets, sewing baskets of various types, and dainty little baskets used for trinkets.

Many country stores accepted baskets in exchange for items purchased. Mildred Youngblood remembers that practically everything her mother ever got from the local store she did so in exchange for her baskets. In 1980, I found a small rural store near Mildred's home in Cannon County, Tennessee, which still carried on this practice. They had on hand a hundred or more recently made baskets hanging in back of the store building.

 

The baskets in the Museum of Appalachia's collection tells stories like these about their owners. We've posted photographs of a few of them here, but only a trip out here to see us will let you see the diversity of function and fabrication represented in our collection.

 

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