19TH CENTURY

This basket is one of a group of similarly tooled leather baskets with history of ownership and manufacture in the Richmond area. A basket in the collection of the American Museum of Folk Art (see Hollander, et al., American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum (New York, 2001), p. 178, fig. 146), bears the initials "GF" on its underside, as do three other known examples suggesting that George Freitag, listed as a bootmaker in the city directories, may have been the maker. Other closely related examples have survived with provenance suggesting that they were made by inmates in the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond. An example illustrated in Maine Antiques Digest, (June 2000), p. 20A, was accompanied by a note that read "The convicts were not furnished with work but were allowed to employ their time to their own benefit, making whatever they could that would sell to visitors... Miss Patterson and I visited the penitentiary, as was common thing among the residents of Richmond, and brought away some of the work. While there I ordered a basket for her." For a similar example sold Christie's, New York, sale 1247, June 18, 1993, lot 86.