Isaac Downs exhibit at Shelter Island Historical Society

Sometimes a basket is so much more than a basket. Once indepensable, useful vessels that functioned throughout daily life, it’s easy to forget — in this age when there is a Tupperware container for every purpose — that a craftsman’s painstakingly woven products were valued as more than “country decor.”

For decades on Shelter Island, Isaac Downs wove baskets in many sizes and shapes, from eel pots to clothespin holders. His artistry and the role it played in Islanders’ lives is celebrated in an exhibit on now at the Shelter Island Historical Society’s History Center.

Perhaps the most moving presentation is a simple, white rectangular basket that served as a bassinet for generations of Island families over a hundred years, whose names are listed on the wall above it. From 1910 to 2015, the bassinet cradled 22 infants from the Burns, Mills, Dickerson, Payne, Anderson families and many more.

Working from his home on North Cartwright Road, Isaac Downs  — known as “Uncle Ike” — made the baskets from white oak trees that he had cut down himself and then softened by soaking in the swamp area behind his house. He was known as the principal basketmaker on the Island, making each basket to order.

Born in 1842, his personal story includes a document citing him as having enlisted in the Union Army in 1862, then deserting, but the exhibit notes that may not be the full story.

He was married to Josephine Pratt Lucas in Sag Harbor in 1867 and they raised a family of four children. He died in 1925 and is buried in the cemetery at the Presbyterian Church. Thanks to many Islanders who have kept these handmade baskets through the years and donated them to the Society’s collection, they help illuminate a chapter in the Island’s unique way of life.

Visiting the lower level exhibit space to see the Isaac Downs exhibit is a reminder of how the History Center transformed the Havens House into a larger space that could safely preserve and exhibit artifacts that tell the Island’s story.

In this cool, softly lit room, the Downs baskets are arrayed in front of the Helena Hernmarck tapestry, a permanent exhibit reproducing the 1652 Articles of Agreement among Capt. Thomas Middleton, Mr. Constant Sylvester, Capt. Nathaniel Sylvester and Ens. John Booth Gives, who had purchased the Island from Stephen Goodyear of New Haven, Conn. Ms. Hernmarck created the tapestry to honor the Historical Society for preserving the original Articles of Agreement, the oldest document in their possession, as well as so many other valuable vestiges of Island life through the centuries. 

It is a place for visitors to contemplate and enjoy on Tuesday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.