Basket bowl

Master weaver Carrie Bethel’s artistic genius is seen in the creative, multicolored backgrounds and designs she produced using materials from the landscape, such as sedge root. This large-scale basket took her three years to complete, and it is the earliest of five monumental works she created. She was awarded the best basket prize of $50 for this piece in the 1929 Yosemite National Park Indian Field Days competition, organized by the park service to encourage basketry as an art form. She later sold the work for $180, a large sum at the time.