14" Navajo Wedding Basket with Corn Meal

As this basket has resident corn meal and the remnant of cotton fabric at its center, it was likely used in an American Indian citizen's wedding ceremony.

The "Navajo wedding basket", as it is commonly called (even though often they were fashioned by the Pauites for the Navajo people) is an important ritual vessel for many other types of ceremonials in addition to weddings.

The traditional red and black pattern on neutral ground is consistent with all "wedding baskets". Its spiritual symbolism is difficult to translate-both, into words from feeling and into English from Dine culture. The red open circle is like a naja-symbol of the womb and source of life. It is bordered by black, stepped peaks inside and out. These peaks are home, mother earth, the sacred places.

Just as the red and black are tied together in one design, the Dine (the People) are one with the earth that gives them sustenance. During ceremonials the basket is filled with the appropriate corn meal mixture--from which each participant takes a portion to eat. As the basket is passed from person to person, the design opening is kept facing the east--direction of sunrise, new beginnings, new life.

For weddings, blue corn meal, ashes and water are used to make a gruel or "mush" which is consumed by the wedding participants in ritual "communion".

Corn is the most important single food element in traditional Dine culture. It is a gift from the Creator and mother earth to maintain life and has come to represent life itself and Dine connection with the earth. For this reason, a basket with traces of cornmeal in the weaving is very desirable. It has been "blessed" with ritual use.

 A properly wall mounted wedding basket should always be hung with the design opening toward heaven--to catch the Creator's blessings.

This information was relayed by a Dine gentleman and his wife.

"Unknown artist" is appropriate when a work of art is unsigned and a supported opinion about who made it is not available (on Savvy Collector).. "Attributed to" precedes the name of an artist when information suggests that it likely was made by that artist (on Savvy Collector).