KLICKITAT IMBRICATED BASKET

George Terasaki, New York, probably acquired in the 1960s

Mary Dodds Schlick notes that "the Klikitat method of decorating [baskets] as the coils are being sewn is unique to this small part of the world. Otis T. Mason, the curator of ethnology for the Smithsonian Institution in 1904, named the process 'imbrication' (derived from the Latin imbrex, 'tile') because the stitch gives the surface of the basket a tilelike appearance [Mason, Aboriginal American Indian Basketry, Santa Barbara and Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1976, p. 310]. Imbrication is known only in a limited area on the Fraser and Thompson rivers, on the Columbia River, and by the Salish tribes of northwest Washington." (Dodds Schlick, Columbia River Basketry, Seattle and London, 1994, p. 103).