Gotlieb Steiner (1844-1916) and his wife Elizabeth were early collectors of western baskets. They began their collecting ca. 1900 after Gotlieb retired from the Schoenberger Steel Company, in which he was second vice president. The Steiners made annual trips out west to visit Gotlieb's brothers in San Francisco and Carson City, NV.
Documentation of Steiner's basket purchases exist from 1902 on and included baskets from geographical areas extending from the Caribbean to Alaska, but the vast majority of his collection came from the western United States and Western Canada. The Steiners kept their collection in their Pittsburgh home until 1913, when Dr. William H. Holland, Director of the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, obtained the entire collection numbering five hundred pieces, on loan. The Steiner Collection remained on exhibit at the Museum until 1937, constantly being added to over the years by Gotlieb and Elizabeth, even up to the months preceding Gotlieb's death in February of 1916. In 1937 the collection was returned to the Steiner family and was placed in storage barrels for the next 35 years until 1972 when Elsa Huff, the youngest Steiner daughter, built a private museum for the collection on the family farm near Porterville, Pennsylvania. The G.A. Steiner Museum today exhibits one of the premier Native American basket collections in the country. It is not open for public viewing except by arrangement with William Huff, the grandson of Gotlieb and Elizabeth and architect of the museum.
Zigmond, Maurice. "Gotlieb Adam Steiner and the G.A. Steiner Museum" Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. Vol. 1, No. 2, 1979. pp. 322-330