Weaving Nantucket’s Past into Its Future The Craft Continues

The baskets illustrated here will be included in the summer 2022 Nantucket Lightship Basket Museum exhibition at Hadwen House. Look for them and many other finely made island baskets when the exhibition reopens.

OPENING MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND Hadwen House

This nest of three baskets was made by Rowland Folger (1803–1883), who is among the earliest documented makers of Nantucket’s distinctive baskets. Gift of Samuel Shipley (A2012.2.1-.3).

Karol M. Lindquist is a leading basket weaver on island today. This seven-inch sewing basket has a burled maple base inside and handles shaped from whale ivory. It was inspired by a nineteenth-century basket of similar construction, where a second smaller basket was woven to serve as a pedestal or foot for the main basket. Gift of the Traditional Lightship Basket School (A2007.10.1).

This small basket made of oak splints was produced toward the end of the nineteenth century. Baskets like this one were made in great numbers by members of the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag communities and found extensive use throughout the Cape and Islands region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Gift of John DeCiccio (A2013.2.1).

This finely made Nantucket basket is the work of John A. Paige (1886–1939). He came to Nantucket in 1914 to serve at the Madaket Life-saving Station and was later a member of the newly-formed Coast Guard. He met and married local woman Mary Vincent in 1917, and they moved to Provincetown in 1920. He probably learned basket weaving from his life-saving and Coast Guard compatriots. Gift of the Estate of Sarah A. Ingram Trust (A2019.4.3).

This basket by William D. Appleton (1851–1918) is in the form often called a sewing basket, although at only six-inches across, it is a small and particularly decorative example. The double-heart shaped handles are very fine. Appleton most likely learned basket weaving while a crew member on the South Shoal Lightship in the 1880s. Lent by Phillip Carpenter (L813.8).