Cherokee Pine Needle Platter Basket by Marilyn Toglin McDanel (Cherokee) - SOLD

This elegant "cheese dip" platter by Marilyn McDanel is made of tightly woven ponderosa pine needles and artificial sinew. It flares out from a square shaped, depressed center.  While Marilyn designed this platter to be used for serving a cheese dip in the center and crackers around the outside, this is truly a work of art to be displayed and admired.

Marilyn's Cherokee family moved from Oklahoma to California during the Dust Bowl.  She felt a calling to art from a young age, but it was not until 2003 that she finally found her preferred medium -- baskets woven out of needles from the ponderosa pines that grow in the foothills of the Sierras where she lives. She taught herself how to weave, first making baskets using designs created by others to learn the techniques.  After those first few baskets, Marilyn began to experiment using different weaving techniques, incorporating burl slab bases or weaving beads, shells and bones in with the pine needles. Speaking of her baskets, she says, “Each basket I now create is from my heart and is my own original design.”

Diameter 9", depth 2"