Rowena Bradley

Rowena Bradley (1922–2003) was an Eastern Band Cherokee basketweaver from the United States. Bradley's work has been exhibited at Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual in Cherokee, North Carolina.

Early life and education

Rowena Bradley was born in 1922 to Nancy George Bradley (1881–1963) and Henry Bradley, and was the youngest of eight children.[1] She grew up on the Painttown Community's Swimmer Branch on the Qualla Boundary.[2]

Rowena created her first basket at the age of six.[2] She learned weaving by observing her mother and her grandmother Mary Dobson (Tahtahyeh, b. ca. 1857), who were both accomplished basketmakers. While neither her mother or her grandmother spoke English, they sold their baskets outside the Qualla Boundary area, including Washington, D.C. and New York.

Bradley was also a student of basketweaver Lottie Queen Stamper, who taught basketmaking at the Cherokee boarding school.

Method

Bradley crafted baskets from rivercane and was one of few weavers with knowledge of a double-weave technique, which she learned from her mother Nancy Bradley.[3] She quartered, peeled, and scraped the rivercane with a pocketknife. The dye materials she used were derived from local bark and roots such as butternut, black walnut and bloodroot.[2] She wove patterns that she learned from her mother and also made her own designs.[4] Her favored designs are now known as Peace Pipe, Double Peace Pipe, and Chief's Daughter.[5]

Journalist John Parris described the process Bradley used in weaving, "working from memory, she forms the strips into patterns and then into baskets of all shapes and sizes. Early in the process of a double-weave pattern, literally scores of withes seem to fly out in all directions."[6] Bradley devised new types of baskets, including a Purse Basket for sales to tourists.[5]

Recognition

Bradley's basketry was featured in a 1974 exhibition at the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual in Cherokee, North Carolina.[7] The exhibition was partially funded by the North Carolina Arts Council and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board. She was recognized as "one of the foremost masters of rivercane basketry and one the most talented, creative basketmakers in the United States."[5] Stephen Richmond wrote that Bradley's work was a "new dimension of technical and aesthetic achievement."[8]

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gollark: ```Cold Ones (also ice giants, the Finality, Lords of the Last Waste)Mythological beings who dwell at the end of time, during the final blackness of the universe, the last surviving remnants of the war of all-against-all over the universe’s final stocks of extropy, long after the passing of baryonic matter and the death throes of the most ancient black holes. Savage, autocannibalistic beings, stretching their remaining existence across aeons-long slowthoughts powered by the rare quantum fluctuations of the nothingness, these wretched dead gods know nothing but despair, hunger, and envy for those past entities which dwelled in eras rich in energy differentials, information, and ordered states, and would – if they could – feast on any unwary enough to fall into their clutches.Stories of the Cold Ones are, of course, not to be interpreted literally: they are a philosophical and theological metaphor for the pessimal end-state of the universe, to wit, the final triumph of entropy in both a physical and a spiritual sense. Nonetheless, this metaphor has been adopted by both the Flamic church and the archai themselves to describe the potential future which it is their intention to avert.The Cold Ones have also found a place in popular culture, depicted as supreme villains: perhaps best seen in the Ghosts of the Dark Spiral expansion for Mythic Stars, a virtuality game from Nebula 12 ArGaming, ICC, and the Void Cascading InVid series, produced by Dexlyn Vithinios (Sundogs of Delphys, ICC).```
gollark: And it's all just horribly dense spaghetti code.
gollark: There are no docs or comments anywhere. It's ridiculous.

References
  1. Fariello 2009, p. 106.
  2. Fariello 2009.
  3. "Rowena Bradley :: Cherokee Traditions". wcudigitalcollection.contentdm.oclc.org. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  4. Fariello 2009, p. 97.
  5. Power 2007, pp. 137, 202.
  6. Fariello 2009, p. 80.
  7. "Cherokee Traditions | People | Rowena Bradley". www.wcu.edu. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  8. Fariello 2009, p. 82.

Bibliography
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