For thousands of years Wabanaki men and women have been creating objects of beauty from the offerings of the natural world. Each basket begins its journey as a tree of brown ash, birch, or cedar in the vast forests of Maine. Every inch of the brown ash log is pounded with the blunt side of an ax to release the growth rings into long splints that can be further processed into basketry materials. In early spring Paper Birch and Cedar trees release their bark to those who seek them out. Spruce roots are painstakingly followed and dug from the earth to become binding material for birchbark containers and canoes. In the summer, fragrant sweetgrass is picked blade by blade in marshes along the ocean to be dried and later woven into ash baskets.
