Antique/Vintage Navajo Wedding Basket #4 12"

Description

Navajo wedding basket.  12"  Antique or vintage.
The Navajo "wedding basket" is a required part of a number of Navajo ceremonies, including puberty ceremonies and marriage ceremonies.   In the ceremony, the basket must be held so that the open path in the design faces east/dawn, and because the basket is filled with corn meal so that the design cannot actually be seen, the final coil ends where the path would lead, so that it can be directed without seeing the path.  The center of the basket represents the place where the Dine` emerged into this world, the center part represents the earth with different mountains, with different clouds and rain, surrounded by the red rainbow, over which are the holy people (the dark stairstep designs) over which is the final light colored coil representing the path of the sun, moon, constellations, and people and animals represented by the braided outside rim.
Many wedding baskets were made for Navajos by other tribes more noted for basketry than the Navajo, notably the Paiute.
The piece of cotton in the middle was there when we bought this and 3 others from an antiques store in the 1980s.  Apparently a way the prior collector used for hanging the baskets.
This one has some encrustations on the back.  It had them on the front, too, when we bought it.  I believe this was caused by the meal that the basket held during a ceremony, that was not cleaned out.  It can be removed, but I left it on the back because I liked the evidence that it had been used for its intended purpose.