Dat-so-la-lee and Scees Bryant

In the personalities to whom they refer, these three baskets (Lots 55097, 55098, and 55099) exemplify the transformation of Washoe basketry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from a domestic utensil to a curio and fine art. The four persons involved in this collection are Louisa Keyser (Dat so la lee), her sister-in-law Scees Bryant, and the basketry dealers Amy and Abe Cohn. Scees Bryant lived in Carson Valley, Nevada, and the other three lived just to the north in Carson City.

Louisa Keyser's connection with the Cohns began as Amy's domestic servant in the 1890s, in which capacity she was exposed to basketry from California and other regions that Amy sold in Abe's men's clothing store, the Emporium. Like most Washoe women, Louisa Keyser wove baskets, first as utensils and then as curios. By exploring ideas from other basketry traditions, Louisa Keyser innovated a new form that was widely imitated by other Washoe weavers. She adopted the spheroid shape, which she called degikup, and added redbud to the traditional use of mud-dyed bracken fern in the design of coiled basketry, as well as imitating spaced designs from Pomoan basketry. She also increased the fineness of the weave through the use of metal tools. Recognizing her skill and the commercial viability of this new form, Amy Cohn offered her patronage as a full-time weaver/artist, an arrangement that lasted past Amy's death in 1919 to Keyser's own death in 1925.

Scees (pronounced "cease") was Keyser's closest imitator, though her weaving ranged from pieces almost indistinguishable from Louisa Keyser's to other more idiosyncratic approaches. When Scees died in the Spanish Flu pandemic, Keyser finished those baskets still in process. I believe the basket numbered LK 66 (Lot 55098) is likely one of these, as it features a connected design that Keyser did not use, and there is a clear shift in the basket shape.

Amy Cohn enhanced the commercial success of the baskets by Keyser and other Washoe weavers by giving lectures and writing articles. Amy recorded baskets that she dealt with on special certificates, numbering baskets sequentially in the order of their acquisition. The basket by Scees in this collection is number 3040, which allows it to be dated around 1915. However, Amy Cohn treated Keyser as an artist worthy of special documentation, and thus recorded her baskets in a special ledger, of which she managed two copies: one for the Emporium in Carson City and one for their curio outlet on Lake Tahoe, called The Bicose.

Amy Cohn invented a romanticized context for Keyser's baskets to attract higher-paying customers. She falsely claimed that Keyser was born before "white men" came, that she was a princess, that the degikup was a sacred, ceremonial basket, and that the designs had precise meanings. She called the diamond motif on LK 62 (Lot 55097) a "mortuary mark" and, by incorporating the unusual use of a basket lid, interpreted the design thus: "Let us bury the past, all our troubles, in this basket and cover it."

Abe Cohn contrived stories that portrayed him as the "great white father" to Keyser's childish "Indian," and had these stories published in local newspapers. Identifying LK 62 (Lot 55097) as the "Mad Basket" was his addition to the ledger after Amy's death. The letter he wrote to accompany it demonstrates the contrived nature of the story, since he reports that Charlie Keyser, Louisa's husband, was briefly incarcerated in 1905, whereas the basket was not begun until 1918!

Marvin Cohodas
Vancouver, British Columbia
April 2009