Beautiful,
colorful, intricately woven baskets are produced by hand throughout
Aboriginal Australia.
Some the most striking are created in the Northern Territory area of
Arnhem Land served by an art and cultural center at Maningrida.
This area of approximately 10,000 square kilometers includes many clans
and language groups whose mixed traditions
have contributed to a rich variety of artistic creations.
The baskets
are predominantly coiled, string or "dilly" bags.
They are woven from various natural fibers such as those made from the
leaves of the pandanus plant,
the bark of trees like Kurrajong, Brachychiton diversifolius, Brachychiton
paradoxum and Ficus virens.
These fibers are dyed in vivid oranges, yellows, reds, blacks and purples
by boiling in ground up roots of plants
like Pogonolobus reticulatus and wood ash from Eucalyptus alba.
Maningrida
is a small community that sits on the remote northern coast of Australia's
Arnhem Land
at the estuary of the Liverpool River. During much of the year the community
can be reached only by light aircraft.
Baskets traditionally
are used for gathering foods like roots, tubers, berries, honey and
fish. The baskets offered by
Aboriginals: Art of the First Person have been woven for commercial
purposes and sale to collectors and museums
by the finest aboriginal artists, which come from Maningrida and other
aboriginal communities.
In addition
to baskets, artists at the Maningrida community also use paperbark,
pandanus and palm fiber to weave
three-dimensional figurative sculpture. These figures represent common
creatures in the area:
echidnas, bandicoots, camp dogs, crocodiles and mice.
(We are indebted to Fiona Salmon of Maningrida for the background material included in the foregoing discussion.)
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Aboriginal Art Gallery
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