Nestled amidst baskets of various shapes and sizes in one of the Pitt Rivers’ Basketry displays, PRM 1938.36.1822 stands out for its unique shape: from a simple grid of woven tule reed emerges a rabbit, with little braided legs, a rather triangular head, and long, leporine ears. At approximately 30cm long and 20cm tall, the rabbit basket has a narrow opening at the top, along the rabbit’s back, and a twisted tule handle that is anchored at the back of the rabbit’s neck and emerges at its rear as a cleverly knotted tail. The basket is instantly endearing, with its almond-shaped eyes, made by gaps in the woven reed, and its wide-open mouth.
Where did this rabbit basket come from, you might wonder? Surely it didn’t hop out from the University Parks. (Or perhaps that I even imagined such a thing just shows that I have grown too convinced of the basket’s rabbity-ness.)
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1938.36.1822. Rabbit-shaped tule reed basket from Mexico |
This basket was made in central Mexico in the early 1930s, by an unknown Otomí person—the Otomí are among Mexico’s many Indigenous communities, and they predated the famous Aztecs in the region around what is now (perhaps confusingly) the state of México! The basket travelled from Latin America to the Pitt Rivers Museum thanks to Beatrice Mary Blackwood, an influential, long-time staff member at the Museum. Though Blackwood’s main anthropological fieldwork was carried out in Melanesia, in 1939 she visited the United States and Mexico in order to attend two academic conferences. She bought this basket in the market in Toluca, the capital city of the state of México. In fact, all throughout her 1939 trip to North America, Blackwood collected a stunning array of baskets: a few of my favorites are a tiny, toy basket made of dyed horsehair from Guanajuato, Mexico (1938.36.1853.1); two wonderfully colorful and textured art baskets, made by a Pomo person in California (1939.8.1B and 1939.8.2B); and a geometrically patterned birch bark basket from the Chippewa tribe in the midwestern United States (1939.6.27B).
But, despite resplendent decorations or adorable patterns, like the row of little ducks on a Canadian basket (1938.36.1930.1), the rabbit-shaped basket remains distinctive. One crucial part of the rabbit basket’s story is the community it came from, the Otomí. (The Otomí also have several other names for themselves, or endonyms, such as Ñähñu, but Otomí remains the more widely used term.) Around 670,000 Otomí people live in Mexico today, though Otomí people are increasingly migrating to the United States out of economic necessity; when Blackwood was in Mexico, the Otomí population was likely closer to 300,000.
The Otomí have endured for centuries, surviving despite the pressures of major empires, like the Aztecs and Spanish. Though there is much of interest in their history and culture (for instance, they were once allied with the Spanish and helped to occupy other parts of Mexico), several types of Otomí folk art are particularly of note.
Firstly, the tenango: technicolor stripes of fabric creating intricate animals, plants in impossible colors, and impeccable stitch work all characterize this style of embroidery, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Tenangos drew on existing forms of Otomí embroidery, like the brightly embroidered shawl in the Museum’s collection (1946.6.17), but were made with the express purpose of selling outside the Otomí community, as a source of income in changing economic conditions. Tenangos continue to be both widely made and economically important amongst Otomí communities—but, sadly, artisans are often underpaid, and the beautiful designs have been appropriated by major international companies, without recognizing their Otomí origins. Even so, though the medium is different, and the tenangos are certainly more vibrant, the geometric animals frolicking across the fabric seem almost like two-dimensional renditions of the rabbit basket, with its geometric figure and striking profile. A sort of analogue to contemporary tenangos is apparent, too, in two other baskets Blackwood bought around Toluca, one with a purple and green (and red and white) butterfly at its base (1938.36.1824), and another with green, purple, and red human and animal figures encircling its outer edge (1938.36.1825).
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1938.36.1824 (top) and 1938.36.1825 (bottom). Colorful, coiled Otomí baskets
made of palm leaves.
1946.6.17. An Otomí shawl, or ayate, made before 1946; woven cotton embroidered with dyed wool.
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Another enduring Otomí art form, far more ancient than contemporary tenangos, is traditional bark paper, called papel amate. Made by boiling, beating, and drying bark, some Otomí communities still make papel amate using techniques from before the Spanish Conquest; figures cut from papel amate represent the Otomí concept of zaki, or life force, and are used by healers in a wide variety of ceremonies. Papel amate cutouts and codices are still made today, and the Pitt Rivers even has codices about COVID-19 (2022.58.19 and 2022.58.20), made by the Otomí healer Alfonso García Téllez. And, around the same time tenangos were developed for sale beyond Otomí communities, papel amate had a period of popularity and profitability: paintings by Indigenous Nahua artists on amate paper became quite popular with tourists.
2022.58.20. Papel amate (bark paper) codex about COVID-19,
made by Alfonso Garcia Téllez.
Although Otomí adaptation of traditional arts for tourists’ consumption is more readily apparent in the late 20th century, the period when Blackwood was in Mexico was a major turning point for Mexican tourism. Today, Mexico is an incredibly popular tourist destination, but in the early 20th century, that was not the case: Mexico was the United States’ unruly neighbor, especially after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), and promoting tourism became part of the Mexican government’s nation-building efforts starting in the late 1920s. Especially under President Lazaro Cárdenas (1934 - 1940), a new image of Mexico emerged, centered on its modernization and a romanticization of Indigeneity. And this promotion of Mexican tourism worked—from 1929 to 1945, the number of tourists entering Mexico increased tenfold, from 13,892 visitors in 1929 to 156,550 in 1945. Blackwood went to Mexico in the heart of this period, and she traveled extensively within the country during her visit, collecting many objects for the Pitt Rivers.
I can imagine Blackwood seeing the reed rabbit in the market in Toluca and being delighted by its cute, cleverly formed shape. But the rabbit basket seems to be one-of-a-kind within the Museum’s collections, and so it seems sensible to wonder whether it was a sort of fluke, one Otomí artist’s pleasure project, or if it’s just that the basket lacks companions within the Pitt Rivers’ collections.
A possible answer appeared unexpectedly in the middle of a bilingual tourist magazine from 1935, called Mexican Folkways. In a series of articles about Mexican folk arts, an American named Frances Toor who had moved to Mexico describes the ‘petate toys’ made by some Otomí artisans—petates are multipurpose reed mats that predate the Spanish and remained widely used in the 1930s, and some Otomí weavers made figures from woven reeds, like men on horseback or little buildings. She also mentions similarly woven rattles made by Otomí people—just like the Pitt Rivers’ own deer-shaped rattles Blackwood bought in Mexico (1938.36.1863 and 1938.36.1864). Toor’s text supports the conclusion that the rabbit basket was a toy, found in the Museum’s book Basketmakers: Meaning and Form in Native American Baskets (1992), which accompanied an exhibition in which the rabbit basket was displayed.
Toor, Frances. 1935. ‘Las Artes Populares Mexicanas / Mexican Popular Arts.’ Mexican Folkways Special Number – The Popular Plastic Arts (August 1935): p.39. https://digital.iai.spk-berlin.de/viewer/image/101265639X/1/LOG_0003/
The rabbit basket could also be labeled a ‘petate toy’, it seems, though the fact that it is a basket remains odd. With its narrow opening and limited volume, it does not make for a particularly functional basket; the Pitt Rivers has toy baskets in its collection, too, but those are usually tiny versions of full-sized, adult baskets, while the rabbit basket seems awkwardly large for a child, yet impractical for adult use. I suspect that this fusion of petate toy and impractical basket is related to tourist-oriented folk arts and the boom of Mexican tourism in the 1930s: perhaps the basket was at once a petate toy and tourist-targeted product, with a charming shape and suggestion of practicality that seemed suitably indigenous to appeal to a visitor.
All these musings are just a fraction of what could be said about a single, unassuming basket. The basket’s nearly century-long history at the Pitt Rivers, Blackwood and the story of its acquisition, and the rich Otomí heritage from which it came are all woven into the basket’s story—but that story did not end when the basket arrived at the Museum. As it elicits a smile, a laugh, or even just a cursory glance, the basket’s story continues in its ongoing relationship with viewers, researchers, and all the rest.
And the rabbit basket can be a starting point to celebrate and preserve Otomí history, arts, and culture—a small but valuable contribution to decolonizing the Museum, and engaging with the continued marginalisation of Mexico’s Indigenous communities. Perhaps the rabbit basket and other Otomí artefacts in the Museum could be part of a project with Otomí immigrants in the United States, as they navigate their displacement from the location that has defined their Indigeneity, or with Otomí communities still in Mexico that are increasingly fractured by migration. Alongside continued practices of embroidery and beating bark into paper, the Pitt Rivers collection’s rabbit basket, coiled baskets, and more could make another element of Otomí heritage and artistry accessible and immediate to communities navigating destabilising change and continued marginalisation, on the path to a dynamic, de-colonial, and more hopeful future.
By Isabella Gamboa
Masters student in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology
University of Oxford
