Elizabeth Hickox

(b Karuk territory, CA, 26 July 1875; d Somesbar, CA, 19 July 1947). Native American basket-weaver. She was born of a Wiyot mother and Euro-American father. She achieved a secure life with her second marriage, in 1895, to Luther Hickox, a half-blood miner and mill-owner who later became Justice of the Peace. She directed her weaving to the ?lite market, specializing in a lidded 'gift basket' with undulating profile and a high knob. On these she delineated main designs with supreme attention to the relationship of positive and negative elements and embellished them with a complex scheme of bordering designs and shifts in weaving technique. Her second daughter, Louise Hickox (b 29 April 1896; d 18 Sept 1962), also a basket-weaver, achieved almost equal results. Both were interviewed extensively by anthropologist Lila O'Neale in 1928 and provided most of the technical information for O'Neale's 1932 publication of Yurok-Karok basketwork. Their baskets were featured in a 1990 exhibition at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles. In 1908 Elizabeth Hickox met Grace Nicholson, the premier basketwork dealer, who operated her business in Pasadena, CA, but who travelled through the far west each summer to collect basketwork and ceremonial objects. Nicholson began purchasing Hickox's work, and by 1910-11 had acquired exclusive rights to the weaving of both mother and daughter. Nicholson recorded over 90 Hickox baskets in her ledger, identified by number, dimensions and sketches. Nearly half of these are also documented in photographs. Almost no records exist for Hickox baskets woven after 1922, when Nicholson appears to have suspended these ledger entries, perhaps because of her growing interest in Oriental arts. In the late 1920s Elizabeth Hickox produced primarily miniatures, due to the disintegration of the ?lite market for fine art curios. By 1934 Nicholson ceased collecting from the Hickoxes, who then gave up weaving. The Nicholson materials, which provide most of the information on the Hickoxes' careers, are divided between the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley and the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.

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