\ HOPI BASKETRY [Hopi Basket Icon]

Hopi Basketry

Uses

Continuation of the long tradition of basketry demonstrates the importance of basketry in Hopi culture. Baskets are used in many activities on the mesas and are sold to visiting art collectors and tourists. Different types of baskets have unique uses. The most common categories of baskets are plaques, trays, and bowls, serving a variety of everyday and ceremonial functions.

Plaques are either coiled or wicker, and trays are most often plaited twill. As a part of the wedding ceremony, plaques are traditionally made by the bride's family for the groom's family. These plaques are repayment for the bridal robes woven by the men of the groom's family. Tray varieties include peach trays used for sifting parched corn and piki trays used to serve or carry piki, the paper-thin, traditional Hopi bread made from blue corn meal.

Bowls, deep form baskets such as burden baskets, are woven by using coiling or wicker techniques. The burden baskets once woven by men were used to haul loads on the back of a person or animal. Peach baskets were commonly used to carry fruit up the mesas. And, a third type of bowl shaped basket is the wastebasket, a result of market demand.

While some functions of baskets in Hopi life have remained the same for many years, clearly new functions have also developed. Like the Hopi people, themselves, functions of basketry are grounded in traditions of the past and are selectively adaptive to the changes of today.

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