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CLAYTON, Edith
- Born
- East Preston, Nova Scotia, 1920
- Died
- East Preston, Nova Scotia?, 1989
- Biography synopsis
- A descendant of the Black Loyalists of 1812, Edith (Drummond) Clayton was one of Nova Scotia’s best known basket weavers. The Splintwood technique of basket making she used originated in Africa and was passed down from mother to daughter over six generations. Through the Atlantic Slave trade, this method made its way from Africa to the Americas and then to Nova Scotia during the Black migrations of 1812-14. Clayton made her first basket at eight years of age and grew up knowing that basket weaving was not recreational. Basket making served as a year-round means to earning much-needed income in a social environment that offered Blacks almost exclusively menial, low-waged employment opportunities, if any. Known for her market baskets, Clayton wove many other forms including church collection plates, horns of plenty and baby cradles. She is also known to have obtained natural dyes from Mi’Kmaq women to decorate her work, which speaks to a relationship of exchange and cooperation between African and First Nations peoples in Nova Scotia. Clayton participated in craft fairs across Canada and enjoyed teaching her craft to Canadian and international students as a way of sharing and preserving her heritage. Her career highlights include: representing Nova Scotia at Expo 86 in Vancouver and receiving the Queen’s Medal in 1977. Edith (Drummond) Clayton died on October 8, 1989, knowing that her daughter, Clara Clayton-Gough and many others would keep her family’s basket weaving tradition alive.
- Media used
- Basket making
- File & Archive locations
- Black Cultural Centre of Nova Scotia
- Canadian Women Artists History Initiative Documentation Centre, QC
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
Writings about- Bristow, Peggy. We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women's History. Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1994
- Fuller, Danielle. Writing the Everyday: Women's Textual Communities in Atlantic Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004
- Gordon, Joleen. Acadian Root Baskets. Nova Scotia: Nova Scotia: Museum of Nova Scotia, 2005
- Gordon, Joleen. Edith Clayton's Market Basket: A Heritage of Splinterwood Basketry from Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia: Museum of Nova Scotia, 1977
- Gordon, Joleen. "The Basketry Traditions of Nova Scotia." Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot 17.2 (1986): 52-57
- Saskatoon Women's Calendar Collective (2010). Herstory 2011: The Canadian Woman's Calendar. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Cocteau Books, 2011
- Senn, Roma. The Haligonians: 100 Fascinating Lives from the Halifax Region. Halifax: Formac Publishing, 2005
