Sweetgrass Basket

sweetgrass basket, also called slave basket, type of basket made of sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia filipes), so called because it smells like freshly mowed hay. The art of the sweetgrass coiled basket, born in West Africa centuries ago, is still practiced in the United States in the 21st century, chiefly in the Low Country of South Carolina, by the descendents of West African slaves.

Slavers took Africans from the rice kingdoms of the west coast of Africa to coastal South Carolina during the early 18th century. There, in addition to working the rice plantations, slaves made baskets, generally for the storage of dry goods, though some of the baskets were so tightly woven that they could be used to store liquids. Flat baskets called “fanners” were used in the winnowing of rice. Once the rice was harvested and pounded in a pestle with a mortar, a fanner was used to toss it upward into the wind, which blew away the husk, or chaff.

Among slaves, baskets were made by using a sewing technique rather than a plaiting or braiding technique. Long ropes of needlegrass rush (Juncus roemerianus; called bulrush, rushel, or needlegrass) were coiled, one on top of the other, and the coils were held together with strips of white oak bark or saw palmetto. Today makers prefer to use sweetgrass with needlegrass rush and longleaf pine needles (Pinus palustris), sewing these with palmetto leaf (Sabal palmetto), and they produce pleasing designs without dyes by alternating the natural colours of the dried yellowish green sweetgrass, reddish brown-black needlegrass rush, and green longleaf pine needles. The only tools required for basket production were scissors and “sewing bones”—filed down teaspoon handles—or “nail bones” (made from flattened nails or rib bones of a cow or pig). The “bones” were used to tuck the palmetto around the coils.

In general, men collected the materials, which women made into baskets. Depending on its size and function, a single basket could take weeks or even months to make. The basket-making technique was handed down from mother to daughter and remained very much the same for more than 300 years. Baskets made today in South Carolina bear a notable resemblance to those made in West Africa.

Many of the contemporary basket makers are members of the Gullah community, a group descended from former slaves who established themselves on the Sea Islands off the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. The numbers of producers are dwindling, however, and materials are growing difficult to find.

Sweetgrass baskets are one of the oldest African American art forms. Those made by Mary Jackson, who won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 1993 and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2008, showed her to be foremost among the artists creating sweetgrass baskets in the early 21st century.