Low-Country Coil Baskets

Weaving coil baskets is one of America's oldest African crafts. They are generally made of palmetto leaf, sweetgrass, pine needles and bull rushes, all gathered from the surrounding fields and marshlands in the South Carolina low country. The weavers of these baskets can trace their techniques back 400 years to the west African country of Sierra Leone where the techniques were already hundreds of years old.

Many of these coil baskets are on display at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, an African-American cultural institution that's on the site of one of America's oldest schools for freed slaves. Artist Jery Taylor has continued the tradition of weaving these beautiful baskets and generously passes along her skills at basket-weaving classes at the center. Not all baskets are created following the same technique; in fact, subtleties of style and shape depend on the traditions and patterns handed down within individual families.

Low-country sweetgrass baskets were originally made for work but display has long been an important function of these exquisite works of art. Even by the 19th century, women were making them specifically for display. The first show baskets were sold in Charleston in the early 1900s.