"Richard helped his mother make baskets. He stopped at age 13, but started again in his late 30s out of concern that basketmaking was a dying art. In recent decades, tribal efforts and basket-making workshops have inspired new interest and increased the number of Wabanaki artisans," the Main State Museum says.

"One of Richard’s accomplishments is the “World’s Largest Potato Basket,” a towering piece of 7 ½ feet that is on display at the Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum. He created it in 2017 with help from family members.

"Potato baskets were once a key part of the annual harvest. Pickers gathered about 30 pounds of potatoes into a basket, then emptied that basket into a barrel for transportation to a farm’s potato house. Pickers were paid by the barrel."

"Silliboy completed the largest authentic potato basket in Maine and possibly the United States and beyond, which will be permanently displayed at the museum. He and members of his family have been basketmakers for decades. He completed the project just in time for Potato Feast Days in Houlton last August," The County says. 

"Silliboy was one of eight children who learned the art of basket making from his mother, Mary Ann. She would make 10 or 12 dozen baskets a week. As a child, he and his brothers and a sister would cut cedar or brown ash for their mom. The boys would pound the wood at night after working many hours for neighboring farmers. The baskets were sold for 50 cents each to area farmers and businesses, including the Riley Bros. IGA and Fogg’s Hardware Store. Silliboy’s mom also made pie baskets and other decorative baskets of all sizes.

"The project for the largest potato basket was somewhat initiated because of a basket that had been displayed on the lawn of the Houlton Chamber of Commerce during earlier Houlton Potato Feast events, which had randomly been referred to as the largest potato basket around. It caught the eye of a former Ricker College student, Pat Cunningham of Syracuse, New York, who was in Houlton attending a college reunion."

"The treasurer of the agricultural museum, Barry Campbell, and I went to school together. When the school was turned into the Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum, we talked about it for quite a while and then decided to do it [with the encouragement of Pat Cunningham]. We told the Maine Community Foundation. Of course I’m not a grant writer, so I called a friend of mine up in Presque Isle, and she agreed to help," the Maine Community Foundation says.

"I said I could weave the basket in two or three days. Thing was, I’d pound a stick of wood that was an inch and a half wide and seven feet long and saw how long it took me to pound this little piece. I had a three-pound sledge hammer and I had to switch to a four-pound sledgehammer in order to hit the wood hard enough to separate the splints. But then I had to throw away all the thin splints. All I could use were the thick ones.

"My youngest daughter helped me make the bottom; we were six hours making the bottom of that basket. Then my daughter from Nova Scotia came over on vacation, she and her husband. I put them to work. She did all the photography. Her husband had never made baskets. I had him working on the shaving horse and pounding wood. “When you get out of here, you should know how to prepare wood.” Anyway, we worked away at it. My oldest daughter, she came up a few times and helped out a little bit too."

World's Largest Apple Basket: world record in Frazeysburg, Ohio

World's Largest Basket Building: world record in Newark, Ohio

 World's First Potato-shaped Hotel, world record in Boise, Idaho

 World's Largest Traveling Potato Sculpture, world record from Idaho

 World's Largest Baked Potato with Topping Sculpture, world record in Blackfoot, Idaho