Many, many of those were sold in the past 20 years ... it's an imported decorative basket.

Shaker cheese baskets have a hexagonal weave, and rice winnowing baskets have a twilled weave and no holes.

Thanks! I kind of thought maybe it was just some old some old. I wanted to make sure though before I did anything with it, just in case. I'm thinking of staining it a bit darker to match my decor better but didn't want to harm it if it happened to be something.

It may be a lid for a basket or jar.

It could be a gardener's "gathering" basket. It would have been used to gather root vegtables such as carrots and radishes, or green beans and leafy crops. It would hold enough for one meal. The open mesh allows the dirt to sift through.

As another poster mentioned, it might be decoration.

Actually my first thought was that it was a basket for letting rice paper dry in the sun as they do in south east Asia.

I agree with lazygardens. I use to have one of these hanging on my wall in the 80's. Yes, they were popular. Many people would glue flowers on them to make a pretty floral arrangement.