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Samoan Material Culture
Pandanus leaf baskets
Pandanus leaf baskets
Baskets are now plaited of pandanus leaf with the technique derived from floor mats. The check stroke is the usual one. The baskets are small and the commencing edge which is to form the bottom must have the weft ends projecting towards the plaiter sufficiently long to form the other side of the basket. The commencing edge is plaited in check for the width of the basket and continued in depth until the plaiting runs out in a triangle. (See fig. 109.)
When the depth of the basket is secured, the edge to form the rim may be turned down with a plain straight edge or a serrated edge may be made. Both finishes are described under sleeping mats. The basket is then turned inside out when the true outer surface of the wefts is exposed and the turned-down finish of the rim concealed on the inside.
The handles (avei) are made of strips of pandanus, forming a foundation around which four strips of pandanus are plaited in check so that the founda-page 206tion material is concealed. A loop is formed on each side of the rim by pushing the ends of the handle through the plaiting and knotting them.
Where the serrated edge rim is used, the knotted ends of the handle loop are concealed under the plaited finishing band of the rim.
The body of the basket may be decorated with a strip of soa'a plantain bark laid along a weft course and inserted under the crossing wefts.
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Figure 109.—Basket (pandanus leaf):
a, The projecting wefts at the ends are left free. The plaiting therefore narrows along the marginal dextral on the left and the margin sinistral on the right. Some of the projecting free weft ends are doubled in over the margin and tucked under a crossing weft on the plaited part to prevent the side edges of the plaiting from unravelling. The plaiting is done with the true under surface of the weft material upwards. The plaiting is then reversed so that the free weft ends at the commencing edge may be plaited to form the other side. With the available wefts another triangle (2) is plaited resulting in a somewhat lozenge-shaped figure. One end of the original commencement line is shown where the line is indicated by the arrows. b, The plaiting is then doubled over on this line with the true under surfaces of the wefts to the outside. A corner is formed where the marginal wefts (3 and 4) cross each other. This is done by doubling the two marginal wefts around each other and returning them with a check movement in the direction of their previous course. The projecting wefts on the left are treated as working dextrals and those on the right as sinistrals. Commencing with the nearest (5), they are successively plaited in with the dextrals and the end of the basket is filled in. Though there is apparently a wide gap in the figure between the wefts (5) and (6), they are really close together owing to the doubling in of the plaiting. The other end is filled in similarly and the plaiting edge becomes continuous all around.
Samoans hold that such baskets are really a modern development made since women began to smoke and carry small articles not available in olden days. In pre-European days there was little use to which they could be put, though Pratt (23, p. 41) gives 'ete li'i (finely made baskets) and 'ete mamanu (ornamental baskets) in his dictionary, they could still be a fairly modern development. Nowadays they are made for sale. (See Plate XVI, E.)