Borhauer Basket Collection

A display of baskets from the Doris Borhauer collection.

NPS Photo

The Doris Borhauer Basket Collection is comprised of 92 spruce root baskets created by Tlingit and Haida weavers from Southeast Alaska. The National Park Service purchased the collection from Doris Borhauer in 1970. Typically, only a portion of the collection is on display at any one time due to limited display space within the park. The collection's baskets materialize generations of personal and familial histories.

Many of the baskets in this collection were woven from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1960s, though some are from the 1800s. Older baskets in the collection serve utilitarian purposes, such as food storage or cooking, while newer baskets were often produced and sold during Sitka's developing tourist trade in the first half of the 20th century. Each a product of skilled and careful labor, the weavers' identities and baskets' own histories were carefully documented by Doris Borhauer. Particular details such as "made of roots gathered that spring", "payment for a home hygiene textbook", or "entered into the Sitka Community Fair" animate the stories behind each basket. Given the expanse of it's artistic scope and it's comprehensive records, this collection is a remarkable and distinctive contribution to the craft of basket weaving.

 

For more information on the lives of the weavers, and the lives of the baskets they crafted, refer to A Celebration of Weavers, a research project by Helen Dianne Dangel on the Doris Borhauer Collection.

You can view the entire collection in an on-line searchable database hosted by the Alaska Native Knowledge Network. The photographs and notes in the database were compiled by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska through a Historic Preservation Grant from the National Park Service.