Corey Alston gave a 45 minute presentation on the culture of basket making in the slave culture in the Gullah Geechee Culture Heritage Corridor, the Atlantic coastal area from Jacksonville, FL to Jacksonville, NC. He would not have been allowed to be a basket maker without the cultural connection through his wife Karen and her grandmother. The Gullah Geechee is a blended lifestyle based on slave ancestry back to the 1500s, and is generally from the Ogeechee River area. The grass used for the basket gets its name Sweetgrass from the sweet fragrance. All the materials in the baskets are harvested in and around the marshes: sweetgrass, palmetto, bull rush. Plants are not “grown” in gardens or yards. The sweetgrass is harvested between March and October while it is green. It is dried in the sun before weaving. The baskets can have multiple colors depending on the materials used. The bull rush is used to strengthen the baskets. The threading is palmetto which is used “green” while it is flexible. A small tool is used to make openings in the weaving for the threading to go through.Corey Alston spoke about Gullah Sweetgrass Baskets in a prerecorded Zoom presentation.
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