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Since 1901, the Museum has gathered a research collection of approximately 9,000 California Indian baskets. With specimens from almost every tribe in California, and examples representing every technique used in basket weaving, the collection is a unique resource. At the UC Anthropology Museum, private basket collections came to play an increasingly important role after about 1920. As the museum effectively ended large-scale collecting in the field, it began to accept, mostly by donation, many private collections of California Indian baskets. Unlike the earlier collections made by museum anthropologists, many of the baskets in these private collections had not been used by Native peoples, but had been made for sale to outsiders. Yet, just because of this, they were often especially fine and beautiful examples of the weaver's art.
Of these private collections, that donated by Grace Blair de Pue was the largest and most important. Numbering just over 2000 baskets, it includes examples (documented and attributed) by Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Chumash, Diegueño (Kumeyaay), Hupa, Maidu, Western Mono, Paiute, Pomo, Washoe, and Yokuts weavers. Over a period of several decades, Grace Blair de Pue purchased baskets directly from Native weavers and from dealers, while also acquiring entire collections offered by her fellow collectors. Her acquisitions are documented in letters and journal entries. These communications, as well as literature about the weavers and the baskets supplied to her by dealers, provide a historic view of collecting at the time.
The Blair collection was part of an intense and passionate trade in American Indian baskets by a vast network of private collectors, which began in the 1890s. So intense was this collecting that it was commonly called the "basket craze." The motives of the collectors were mixed and complex. Stimulated by the Arts and Crafts movement, many appreciated baskets for their decorative value, while others had varying degrees of interest in the nature of Indian cultures. Although Grace Blair de Pue was most interested in baskets, she collected broadly among Native American arts. She had a genuine concern for Native people, indicated by her willingness to pay whatever price a weaver asked for her work. Blair, who kept her collection in a private museum building at her home in Jackson, California, donated her baskets to the University of California as a memorial to her parents Emily V. Blair and George M. Blair.
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