Basket: rivercane, storage

This undated Indian Arts and Crafts Board photograph is of a rivercane basket by Carol Welch. Dyed with butternut root, a plant that produces a deep brown to black, the basket pattern is called Mountain Peaks. Carol Smith Welch was the daughter of Helen Bradley Smith, an accomplished Cherokee basket weaver. Her aunt, Eva Bradley, was also a basket weaver. Born in 1940, Welch learned to weave white oak baskets by watching her mother and later learned to weave rivercane and honeysuckle baskets from Lottie Stamper in school basketry classes. While at school, she also learned the double weave method of making rivercane baskets and, later, became Lottie Stamper’s assistant. Her husband, Davis Welch, is a master mask maker. Welch lives in the Big Cove Community of the Qualla Indian Boundary, North Carolina. While the basket was posed before material that was thought to be rivercane, in reality, it is bamboo