Functional… Fanciful… Baskets!

WILTON — Baskets, baskets everywhere will overwhelm and welcome visitors to The Betts-Sturges-Blackmar House, 224 Danbury Rd/Route 7, where Wilton Historical Society has assembled more than 300 baskets dating from the 18th Century to the present time. “Functional… Fanciful… Baskets” will remain on view through the end of September.

Basketry, the earliest craft developed by man, was an essential activity and a product used by every nomadic tribe and all civilizations for the gathering, carrying and storage of goods. In the days before Tupperware® and plastic and paper bags, baskets made of wood splints, grasses, cane, pine needles, vines, bark and other indigenous materials, and the vehicles were used in every home, barn, dairy, workshop and business.

The exhibition includes “working” baskets of every type. These are baskets created expressly for the purpose of heavy carrying, gathering and holding things. “Fancy” baskets, made to be decorative rather than functional, are also on view.

“Functional… Fanciful… Baskets” includes baskets made in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, the Appalachian region, and by Native Americans in Maine, Connecticut, New York, the Carolinas and Michigan, presenting regional preferences and differences.

Of particular interest are the less well-known baskets from the regional area. Basket making was a substantial business in rural north Stamford, in an area known as “Dantown,” and also in Scotts Corner and Pound Ridge, both just a few miles away over the New York state border.

Basket makers from these areas made very sturdy oak splint baskets intended for the oyster and clamming industry in Norwalk; for fruit picking in the orchards of Fairfield County; and coal and laundry gathering for the region’s farms, barns and shops.

The Sellecks, a family in Scotts Corners and New Canaan, made smaller scale baskets for gathering fruits, vegetables, eggs, sewing, and other lighter functions, often adding color to the splints. Such a distinction came to be a trademark of a Selleck basket.

In Norwalk, Edwin Monroe made oak and ash baskets in addition to working in his family’s business of moving buildings. (The Monroe family is no longer making baskets, but it is still moving buildings. The Monroes will be moving Wilton Heritage Museum to the Betts-Sturges-Blackmar site for Wilton Historical Society this fall.)

The exhibition also includes a number of Taghkanic baskets, finely crafted ash splint baskets that were made in the Taghkanic areas of Columbia County. Martha Weatherbee’s book The Bushwackers contributed greatly to the recent understanding of the fine work, although it continues to be misidentified at times as Shaker. The Tachhkanic baskets in the Wilton exhibition, which fill an entire showcase, are from the collection of Nellie Ptaszck.

One room of the exhibition is packed with baskets for every chore: feather baskets, laundry baskets, textile baskets, picnic baskets, an eel basket, cheese baskets and drying baskets, several monumental in scale. Woodland Indian storage baskets are well represented with a variety of shapes and sizes, paint and stamped decoration.

The exhibition also includes dramatic groupings of Native American fancy baskets. Penobscot and Passamaquoddy women such as “Molly Molasses” made fabulously complex baskets for the Victorian tourist trade. A number of Cherokee baskets add a different dimension to the show with color, shape and material.

Also of interest are sweet-grass baskets from Walpole Island and the coastal areas of South Carolina, and the birch bark baskets by Tomah Joseph, of Campabella Island, dated 1906.

The earliest documented basket in the exhibition is attributed to Nathan Wooster of Huntington, circa 1766. Others are dated in the 1820s and 40s. The usual bottom designs of Harry “Hen Pen” Harris, a Schaghticote who worked in Stratford and Kent, are very striking. Miniature baskets are also well represented in the collection, made of a variety of materials in a wide range of shapes.

Contemporary baskets made by Harry Hilbert are also included. A longtime resident of Wilton, Mr Hilbert retired in 1980 as an antiques dealer with a business in New Canaan. An avid woodworker, he taught himself to make Nantucket style baskets, or as he calls them, “Nontucket” baskets. His baskets are widely collected and are included in the Smithsonian and Museum of Fine Arts/Boston collections. Mr Hilbert’s are the only examples of contemporary baskets included in the exhibition.

“Functional… Fanciful… Baskets” was inspired by the large collection of baskets assembled by Dana Blackmar and acquired by Wilton Historical Society several years ago. It has been augmented by more than 50 baskets from the personal collections of Charles and Barbara Adams, dealers in South Yarmouth, Mass., who helped the society organize its collection and exhibition.

John Jenner and Moira Kelly, dealers from Sherman, added their Native American baskets, and Peter Curran of Wilton loaned a number of early dated Connecticut baskets. Pound Ridge Historical Society, Stamford Historical Society and Stratford Historical Society have also loaned examples.

The exhibition, organized and designed by museum director Marilyn Gould and curator Susan Gunn, is open Tuesday through Thursday from noon to 4 pm. The museum will also be open Sundays, August 27, and September 3, 10 and 24, from 1 to 4 pm. It’s a good idea to call ahead if planning a visit on a very hot day. The museum building does not have air-conditioning and if visitor traffic is slow, the historical society sometimes closes early.

Several special programs including talks by basket specialists and demonstrations by basket makers are being planned. For additional information call 203/762-7257.