Rice Fanner Sweetgrass Basket, 1991

The Gullah-Geechee people, descendants of enslaved West Africans who resided primarily on isolated coastal plantations from the Carolinas to Florida, are now renowned for making sweetgrass baskets. This basket-making tradition has deep West African roots. Generations have woven together coils of needlegrass, longleaf pine needles, and sweetgrass with strips of saw palmetto or white oak bark, creating a living representation of Gullah culture.