Community News

Renowned Maine basketmaker leaves a strong legacy

Mary Mitchell Gabriel
1908 - 2004


	Mary Mitchell Gabriel. Photo by Bob DeLong, Bangor Daily News.

It is a rare gift to make a beautiful thing with one's hands. Mary Mitchell Gabriel gathered materials from nature — sweetgrass and brown ash splints — to make beautiful baskets in the tradition of her community. Using traditional aesthetic principles and techniques, Gabriel fashioned baskets which are marvels of craftsmanship.

Gabriel was born in Princeton, Maine in 1908. Her mother and grandmother both made baskets. Gabriel made her first basket at the age of seven or eight. Later in life, her work was an essential part of a decade-long effort to revive interest in basketmaking among younger artists. Gabriel was a founding member of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. Her work with the alliance helped build new respect for Wabanaki basketmaking as an artform.

Gabriel's baskets have been displayed in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. and in the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor. In 1994, she was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. She was also honored by the Maine Arts Commission with an Individual Artist Fellowship in 1992.

Describing Gabriel's baskets in 1994, organizers of the National Heritage Fellowship awards wrote, "Mary's baskets are both traditional and individualistic, reflecting both a recognition and the need to produce marketable baskets and a strong personal creative sense... One remarkable aspect of her baskets is the closeness of their weave, which not only is beautiful, but ensures that their beauty will last long into the future."

"If I am to be remembered for my baskets," Gabriel once said, "I want them to live forever."