Pack a picnic or take your lunch to work in style in this special basket created for us by Peterboro Basket Company. In operation for over 150 years in New Hampshire, the company has also provided the baskets for studio lunch deliveries to artists at nearby MacDowell Colony, where Willa Cather herself was a resident in the summer of 1926. Lined with red gingham vinyl (washable), the basket is hand-crafted in ash with our logo. A perfect gift!

The basket measures approx.: 14"L x 9"W x 7"H. 

Due to the fragility and special shipping of the basket, we have included shipping in the total cost.

For gift basket options, check out our "Willa Cather Enthuiast Basket" and "Willa Cather Enthusiast Basket II" (both offered with or without the picnic basket).

Willa Cather loved a good basket!

Like the visiting artists at MacDowell Colony, Godfrey St. Peter in The Professor's House (1925) enjoys a lunch in his study that his wife had prepared for him:

"He had been working hard, he judged, because he was so hungry. He peered with interest into the basket his wife had given him—a wicker bag, it was, really, that he had once bought full of strawberries at Gibraltar. Chicken sandwiches with lettuce leaves, and two shapely, long-necked russet pears. That would do very well; and Lillian had thoughtfully put in one of her best dinner napkins, knowing he hated ugly linen. From the chest he took out a round of cheese, and a bottle of his wine, and began to polish a sherry glass."

Our National Willa Cather Center basket is just the thing for your own picnic, or lunch, in the style of the professor's! 

Or revive an old-fashioned custom and take a cue from Jim Burden in My Ántonia — leave a secret basket full of flowers next May Day on a friend or neighbor's porch:

"I remember I took a melancholy pleasure in hanging a May-basket for Nina Harling that spring. I bought the flowers from an old German woman who always had more window plants than anyone else, and spent an afternoon trimming a little workbasket. When dusk came on, and the new moon hung in the sky, I went quietly to the Harlings' front door with my offering, rang the bell, and then ran away as was the custom. Through the willow hedge, I could hear Nina's cries of delight and I felt comforted."