The “Navajo wedding basket” is an important vessel. Not only used in wedding ceremonies, but many other types of ceremonials such as, girls’ puberty rites, and traditional healing ceremonies.

Traditional ceremonial Navajo baskets always include an open pathway from the center to the periphery. Navajo basket-weavers refer to the opening in the basket’s design as “the way out.” It represents both the Navajo people’s exit from one world and reemergence to the next, as well as the ever-forward progression of individual human thought. In ceremonial practice, the gap in the basket’s design is always oriented to the east, the direction of sunrise, new beginnings and new life. During ceremonials the basket is filled with the appropriate corn meal mixture--from which each participant takes a portion to eat. Baskets that have traces of cornmeal in the weaving are very desirable, as they have been “blessed” with ritual use.

All Navajo baskets employ the coil method of weaving, using three-leaf sumac.