At 70, she embraced her Chumash roots and helped revive a dying skill: basketmaking

Around 1915, the past known Chumash handbasket maker, Candelaria Valenzuela, died successful Ventura County, and with her went a accomplishment that had been cardinal to the Indigenous radical who lived for thousands of years successful the coastal regions betwixt Malibu and San Luis Obispo.

A period and 2 years later, 70-year-old Santa Barbara autochthonal Susanne Hammel-Sawyer took a people retired of curiosity to larn thing astir her ancestors’ basket-making skills.

Hammel-Sawyer is 1/16 Chumash, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Maria Ysidora del Refugio Solares, 1 of the astir revered ancestors of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians for her enactment successful preserving its astir mislaid Samala language.

But Hammel-Sawyer knew astir thing astir Chumash customs erstwhile she was a child. As a young mother, she often took her 4 children to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, wherever she said she loved to respect the museum’s extended postulation of Chumash baskets, “but I had nary inkling I would ever marque them.”

Nonetheless, today, astatine property 78, Hammel-Sawyer is considered 1 of the Santa Ynez Band’s premier handbasket makers, with samples of her enactment connected show astatine 3 California museums.

Short, reddish brownish sticks of dried handbasket unreserved beryllium successful a tiny handbasket successful Susanne Hammel-Sawyer’s kitchen, waiting to beryllium woven into 1 of her baskets. The reddish colour lone appears astatine the bottommost ends of the reeds, aft they dry, truthful she saves each inch to make designs successful her baskets. “These are my gold,” she says.

(Sara Prince / For The Times)

She grows the handbasket unreserved (Juncus textilis) reeds that marque up the weaving threads of her baskets successful a immense galvanized alloy h2o trough extracurricular her Goleta location and searches successful the adjacent hills for different reeds: chiefly Baltic unreserved (Juncus balticus) to signifier the bones oregon instauration of the handbasket and skunk bush (Rhus aromatica var. trilobata) to adhd achromatic accents to her designs.

All her handbasket materials are gathered from nature, and her tools are elemental household objects: a ample integrative nutrient retention instrumentality for soaking her threads and the rusting lid of an aged tin with different-sized nail holes to portion her reeds to a azygous size. Her baskets are mostly the yellowish brownish colour of her main thread, strips of handbasket unreserved made pliant aft soaking successful water.

The handbasket reeds often make a reddish tint astatine the bottommost portion of the works erstwhile they’re drying. “Those are my gold,” she said, due to the fact that she uses those abbreviated ends to adhd reddish designs. Or sometimes she conscionable weaves them into the main handbasket for added flair.

The lone different colors for the baskets travel from skunk bush reeds, which she has to divided and peel to uncover the achromatic stems underneath, and immoderate of the handbasket reeds that she dyes achromatic successful a large bucket successful her backyard.

“This is my witches’ brew,” she said laughing arsenic she stirred the viscous inky liquid wrong the bucket. “We person to marque our ain from thing with tannin — oak galls, acorns oregon achromatic walnuts — and fto it beryllium to dye it black.”

Hammel-Sawyer is singular not conscionable for her accomplishment arsenic a weaver, but her determination to maestro techniques that went retired of signifier for astir 100 years, said anthropologist and ethnobotanist Jan Timbrook, curator emeritus of ethnography astatine the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, which claims to person the world’s largest depository postulation of Chumash baskets.

“Susanne is 1 of the precise fewer modern Chumash radical who person genuinely devoted themselves to becoming skilled weavers,” said Timbrook, writer of “Chumash Ethnobotany: Plant Knowledge Among the Chumash People of Southern California.” “Many person said they’d similar to learn, but erstwhile they effort it and recognize however overmuch time, patience and signifier it requires ... they conscionable can’t support it up.”

Susanne Hammel-Sawyer adds different enactment to her 35th basket, moving from a consecutive backmost seat successful her tiny surviving room, adjacent to a sunny model and the tiny array wherever she keeps each her supplies.

(Sara Prince / For The Times)

In her 8 years, Hammel-Sawyer has made conscionable 34 baskets of assorted sizes (she’s adjacent to finishing her 35th), but she’s successful nary hurry.

“People ever inquire however agelong it takes to marque a basket, and I archer them what Jan Timbrook likes to say, ‘It takes arsenic agelong arsenic it takes,’” Hammel-Sawyer said. “But for me, it’s a mode of slowing down. I truly entity to however accelerated we’re each moving now, and it’s lone going to get faster.”

She and her husband, Ben Sawyer, person a blended household of 5 children and 9 grandchildren, astir of whom unrecorded adjacent their cozy location successful Goleta. Family activities support them busy, but Hammel-Sawyer thinks it’s important for her household to cognize she has different interests too.

“When you’re older, you person to beryllium capable to find a passion, thing your children and grandchildren tin spot you do, not conscionable playing play oregon going connected cruises, but doing thing that matters,” she said. “I privation my grandma and my begetter knew I was doing this due to the fact that it’s a transportation with our ancestors, but it’s besides looking ahead, due to the fact that these baskets I’m making volition past a precise agelong time. It’s thing that comes from my past that I’m giving to household members to instrumentality into the future, truthful it’s worthy my time.”

Also, this isn’t a concern for Hammel-Sawyer. Her baskets are mostly not for merchantability due to the fact that she lone makes them for household and friends, she said. The baskets astatine the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center beryllium to household members who were consenting to indebtedness them retired for display. The Chumash depository does person immoderate of Hammel-Sawyer’s baskets for merchantability successful its acquisition shop, which she said she reluctantly agreed to supply aft overmuch urging, truthful the store could connection much items made by members of the Band.

For the past 8 years, Susanne Hammel-Sawyer has utilized the aforesaid aged tin lid, punched with nail holes of assorted sizes, to portion her moistened handbasket threads to a accordant size.

(Sara Prince / For The Times)

The lone different handbasket she’s sold, she said, was to the Autry Museum of the American West, due to the fact that she was truthful impressed by its exhibits involving Indigenous people. “I conscionable judge truthful powerfully successful the connection the Autry is giving the satellite astir what truly happened to Indigenous people, I thought I would beryllium arrogant to person thing there,” she said.

Making a handbasket takes truthful long, Hammel-Sawyer said, that it’s important for her to absorption connected the recipient, “so portion I’m making it, I tin deliberation astir them and commune astir them. When you cognize you’re making a handbasket for someone, it has truthful overmuch much meaning. And I’m truthful utilitarian, I ever anticipation idiosyncratic volition usage them.”

For instance, she said, she made 3 tiny baskets for the children of a person and was delighted erstwhile 1 utilized her handbasket to transportation angiosperm petals to flip during a wedding. Almost immoderate usage is good with her, she said, but storing fruit, due to the fact that if the effect molds, the handbasket volition beryllium ruined.

Baskets were a ubiquitous portion of Chumash beingness earlier the colonists came. They utilized them for conscionable astir everything, from covering their heads and holding their babies to eating and adjacent cooking, Timbrook said. They enactment blistery rocks into their tightly woven baskets, on with nutrient similar acorn mush, to bring the contents to boil.

“People deliberation pottery is simply a higher signifier of intelligence achievement, but the happening is, baskets are amended than pottery,” Timbrook said. “They’ll bash thing pottery volition do; you tin navigator successful them and store things successful them, and erstwhile you driblet them, they don’t break.”

After Hammel-Sawyer’s archetypal matrimony ended, she worked arsenic an adjunct children’s librarian successful Santa Barbara and met a notation librarian named Ben Sawyer. After their relationship turned romantic, they joined successful 1997 and moved, archetypal to Ashland, Ore., past Portland, and past the foothills of the Sierras successful Meadow Valley, Calif., wherever they took up integrated farming for a twelve years.

Meadow Valley’s colonisation was 500, and the large municipality was adjacent Quincy, the region seat, with astir 5,000 residents, but it inactive had an orchestra and she and her hubby were some members. She played cello and helium viola, not due to the fact that they were bonzer musicians, she said, but due to the fact that “we played good enough, and if we wanted an orchestra, we would person to instrumentality part. I loved however beardown radical were there. We were each much self-sufficient than erstwhile we lived successful the city.”

The Sawyers moved backmost to Santa Barbara successful 2013, the twelvemonth aft her begetter died, to assistance attraction for her mother, who had developed Alzheimer’s disease. And for the adjacent 4 years, betwixt caring for her mother, who died successful 2016, and the commencement of her grandchildren, household became her focus.

But successful 2017, the twelvemonth she turned 70, Hammel-Sawyer yet had the abstraction to statesman looking astatine different activities. Being she’s 1/16 Chumash, she was eligible for classes taught by the Santa Ynez Band. She had seen respective people offerings travel done implicit the years, but thing truly captured her involvement until she saw a basket-weaving people offered by maestro handbasket shaper Abe Sanchez, arsenic portion of the tribe’s ongoing effort to revive the accomplishment among its members.

Most Chumash baskets person immoderate benignant of pattern, though contiguous radical person to conjecture astatine the meaning of the symbols, Timbrook said. Some look similar squiggles, zigzaggy lightning bolts oregon prima rays, but the wonder, marveled Hammel-Sawyer, is however the makers were capable to bash the intelligence mathematics to support the patterns adjacent and consistent, adjacent for baskets that were fundamentally mundane tools.

Hammel-Sawyer is cautious to travel the basics of Chumash weaving, utilizing the aforesaid autochthonal plants for her materials and weaving techniques that see small ticks of contrasting colour stitches connected the rim, thing disposable successful astir Chumash baskets. She keeps a bully proviso of bandages for her fingers due to the fact that the reeds person crisp edges erstwhile they’re split, and it’s casual to get the equivalent of insubstantial cuts.

She keeps conscionable 2 baskets astatine her location — her archetypal effort, which “wasn’t bully capable to springiness anybody,” she said, laughing — and a handbasket chapeau started by her precocious sister, Sally Hammel.

This handbasket chapeau was started by Susanne Hammel-Sawyer’s sister, Sally Hammel, but the stitches became ragged and uneven aft Sally began attraction for cancer. She was truthful distressed by her work, she hid the unfinished basket, but aft she died, Hammel-Sawyer recovered it and brought it location to implicit it. It’s 1 of lone 2 baskets she’s made that she keeps successful her home.

(Sara Prince / For The Times)

“Sally was an creator successful pottery, singing, acting and surviving beingness to the fullest,” Hammel-Sawyer said, and she was precise excited to larn basketry. Her handbasket chapeau started well, but astir a 3rd of the mode in, she got crab “and her stitches became much and much ragged. She had occupation concentrating, occupation preparing materials,” Hammel-Sawyer said. “Everything became truthful hard that she hid the handbasket away. I cognize she didn’t adjacent privation to look astatine it, fto unsocial person anyone other spot it.”

After her sister died successful 2020, Hammel-Sawyer had a hard clip uncovering the basket, “but I did, and I asked my teacher what to do, and helium said, ‘Just effort to marque consciousness of her past row’ ... So that’s what I did.” She added a heavy black-and-white set supra the ragged stitches and finished the blond rim with the accepted contrasting ticking.

The chapeau rests present supra the model successful Hammel-Sawyer’s surviving room, but erstwhile she wears it to tribal events.

“Sally and I were precise close, and I deliberation she’d conscionable beryllium blessed to cognize it was finished and appreciated,” Hammel-Sawyer said. “Even the hard parts ... profoundly appreciated.”