Episode 1: Sweetgrass Baskets
Download MP3By me having that culture and that connection from my ancestors and the style and the design and what was you what it was used for, especially rice fanners, for fanning the rice and everything else, it gives me that connection that I would always hold on to my roots of that nature.
Courtney:I'm Courtney McGill and you're listening to Griot's Garden, a podcast that explores the intersection between people, plants, and culture through conversations with descendants of Sapelo Island's Gullah Geechee community. Join us as we share stories of how native plants have played an important role in their lives. In this episode, we'll hear from Sharron Grovner, whose ancestry on Sapelo Island spans more than 10 generations. Sharron is known by many for her years of work at the historic Reynolds mansion, where she interacted with countless island visitors. And through her work with her parents, Lula and the late George Walker, who ran a family restaurant on the island called Lula's Kitchen.
Courtney:Sharron is also recognized for her beautifully coiled handmade sweetgrass baskets.
Sharron:Well, my name is, Georgetta Sharron Grovner. I live here on Sapelo Island. I was born and raised. I'm married. We have 2 children, and we have 2 grands now.
Sharron:We both are retired now.
Courtney:Sweetgrass basket weaving is practiced in coastal and barrier island communities from North Carolina to Florida in a region called the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. The Gullah Geechee people are the descendants of enslaved West Africans who worked on coastal plantations. Because of their isolations, they were able to retain many West African traditions brought to these shores in the early 1800s during the transatlantic slave trade.
Sharron:When our ancestors were brought over here to, to the states and everything on the side, from Africa, West Africa, a lot of traditions came from that area and they brought with them how we our culture was, weaving sweetgrass baskets.
Courtney:When you visit Charleston or Beaufort, South Carolina, you'll see people sitting on rural roadsides or in city parks and on street corners selling these intricate baskets. In Georgia, you'll find basket weavers on Sapelo and Saint Simons Islands and in other Gullah Geechee communities like Riceboro, Darien, Harris Neck, and Savannah. While originally constructed for practical purposes such as storing food, toting things like crops from the fields, and fanning rice, flipping the grains into the air so that the husk could be carried away with the wind. Today, sweetgrass baskets are considered works of art. One of Sapelo's most notable basket weavers was Allan Green.
Courtney:His works have been exhibited by the Smithsonian in Washington DC and the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Sharron:Mr. Green, I saw him making the basket, him and his wife, Miss Anna May, when I was younger. And it was beautiful how they would make it. It was always beautiful baskets. Now, his basket's on the Smithsonian. I asked my mother.
Sharron:She has a couple of baskets that Mr. Green she bought from Mr. Allen Green. And I said, mama, do you still have your basket? She said, yeah.
Sharron:She said, I think I'll always keep it. And she said, I'm not gonna never get rid of it. She said that, I have something to remember him by.
Courtney:He died in 1998. But before his passing, he was awarded a grant that allowed him to host workshops and share his techniques with people on the island. Sharron Groevner was one of his students.
Sharron:Mr. Allen Green was the master basket weaver on the island at the time and he had a different unique way about making the baskets. He would take the grass, the sweet grass, you cut it and once it dries and everything, you would scrape it down, take all the dead stems off the sweetgrass baskets, I mean the sweetgrass, and then you discard it and then keep the very center part of it. That's what he would use. But we found that when we do the baskets, we keep some of the discarded grass that looks good to us and we make our baskets with that and all.
Courtney:Over the years, Sharron and others who make sweetgrass baskets have incorporated their own personal styles.
Sharron:Something about the design, the creativity of it. I love to create a a style of my own. I've done with different styles and designs and everything also. By me having that culture and that connection from my ancestors and the style and the design and what was you what it was used for, especially rice fan is for fanning the rice and everything else. It gives me that connection that I would always hold on to my roots of that nature.
Sharron:I'm proud of my styles that I do when I finish, basket.
Courtney:The enslaved West Africans and Gullah Geechee descendants adapted their basket weaving methods to include New World plants that naturally occur in the coastal habitats within their communities. Although referred to as sweetgrass baskets, they are typically made from several native plant species that occur in coastal habitats. They include sweetgrass, cabbage palm, longleaf pine, and bulrush, also known as black needlerush.
Sharron:Sometimes I just use just the sweet grass. I also use pine needles to put in the basket that gives it a little bit of color or whatever. I use the bullrush. It's like the little small needles grass that you see in the in the in the marsh that's green, has a little sharp tip point on it. I use that.
Sharron:I put the tips off and I use that and I put that in the basket. It gives a different color.
Courtney:Basket makers use soft or hard sweetgrass based on the desired product. Hard sweetgrass refers to a muhly grass species that grows along ocean dunes and barrier islands. It is used to sell baskets. The more flexible and finely textured soft sweetgrass is a more common species that grows in interior habitats like open woodlands and savannahs and is used to make earrings.
Sharron:There's a sweetgrass that we have here on the island, sweetgrass that we have here on Sapelo. And then there's the other grass called the purple muhly grass. We have a lot of here in the coast, up and down the coast here. The purple muhly grass is more flexible. It's bendable.
Sharron:You can do designs and everything else and all. The sweet grass is not as flexible as that. It's more, durable. It's more coarse. So you can do certain designs with it, but you have to be cautious because it may break and you have to start again or you you have to make design around it.
Sharron:The sweet grass, the grass itself, well, you just take it and you just take off the dead pieces and everything else. You discard it and then there's a few other pieces that are still good to the that goes up to the top part of the grass. And, you just keep that and you can use that to stick into the grass, the basket while you're stitching. Now, there are some people that take the purple mule grass and you can start the baskets with that. Like, when I'm making my earrings, I use the purple mule grass and I start the baskets with that because all you do is just put it into a little knot, tie it and start weaving and stitching through to make a circle.
Sharron:I do, like, a what they call a a clockwise going around circular shape and all to make the baskets. That's how I do mine. But a person that's left handed, they can do it counterclockwise.
Courtney:Cabbage palm, often called saw palmetto, is also used in sweetgrass baskets. It requires special care when collecting and integrating it into the baskets.
Sharron:It's a lot of time consuming. It's dangerous because you never know if you see snakes in the grass. When you cut in the grass, you have to go cut the palmetto out the woods. You have to scrape the palmetto. I mean, I've scraped I've got more tattoos of Palmetto's cut on my arm you could imagine and it's it wears on your wrist and it ties and when you script the Palmetto what you do is you have a sharp not too sharp of a knife though because you don't want to cut it through because it's it's it's delicate as you shave with the palmetto.
Sharron:Now, once you take the palmetto and you cut the top off and you cut the bottom off and you have the little saw part on the side there, you script that down too as well. Then you take the palmetto and you script that very cautiously with your knife and everything else until it gets really thin. Not too, too thin, but thin enough that you can be able to use it to stitch. And the shaving from the inner part of the palmetto, you would take that and use to make the basket with. And then, you have your nail.
Sharron:You you take your nail and, that's one of the tools you can use. You can use a paint can opener. You could take it and file it down. You could sand it and file it down real good. You can use a nail and get a hammer and just beat it down till it flattens and then smooth it to stick through the grass while you're stitching, palmetto.
Sharron:You can also use like, end of a spoon and cut it and file it down and use that. It's all how you create it, come creative with the ideas of doing it. After you script it, you want to take the Pamana and put it in water because water's, have it moist, it's more moisture that way and then once you've gotten through with it, you could take it and shake the water off or what have you and all and then put it back in the Ziploc bag and then put it back in the refrigerator. You don't wanna leave it out because it'll dry out.
Courtney:Along the Gullah Geechee corridor, many communities are facing ongoing threats to preserve the land, culture, and way of life that has been in their families for generations. Sweetgrass basket weaving doesn't just serve as an art. It's an economic driver for modern day Gullah Geechee people. By skillfully crafting baskets, these artisans are able to generate income to strengthen their livelihoods within the community. Mr. Allen Green didn't just teach people how to make baskets.
Courtney:He reminded them to stand firmly on the value of the detailed and sometimes dangerous work involved in the craft. Sharron recalled a time when Mr. Green put this lesson into practice.
Sharron:They want he he would have a price on the baskets. And the baskets would be like $45 for average small to medium sized basket at that time then. Well, one of the guests came in and asked, $45? That's a little too much. And so Mr. Green said that did I say $45?
Sharron:I said, I meant $55. So the guy said that, $55? Mr. Green said that, did I say $55? I mean, $65.
Sharron:So he kept going up $10 more on these people and they finally figured it out. Stick with the price he gave you. I sell the basket to my tourists. I do private tours, and if they wanna buy it all, I, give craft shops, sometimes go to a festival or whatever. I used to do it at the festivals and all too as well, so Sometimes you hate to part with it, but you know, you selling it.
Sharron:You're making money.
Courtney:While sitting at Sharron's kitchen table for this interview, she went into so much detail about the process of basket making. Between the many hours it took to learn and perfect the craft to the complex task of collecting and preparing the plants, and then the careful customization that goes into each design. I can understand how hard it must be to part ways with them. But she has created a way to remember her work and maintain the link to her ancestry.
Sharron:I take photographs and keep it so I can always go back and look at it and show my kids and my grandkids and everything else how that cultural family connection is still can be with you and you can always keep it and carry it with you and no matter what whether you have the photograph or not but it's just the idea of just knowing that something that your ancestors brought from their country to here. And we still continually make these arts and designs and keep within us and share with our families.
Courtney:When I was growing up on the island, I spent a good amount of time at the Grosvenor House with Sharron's daughter, who was my schoolmate and friend. I remember seeing miss Sharron sitting on her couch watching TV while casually weaving away with her baskets. Basket making is an extraordinary example of the Gullah Geechee people's will to survive and stay tied to their West African roots through the passing down of traditions from one generation to the next, and that passing down is still alive today.
Sharron:And I'm teaching now my grandchildren how to make the baskets. So my grandson is learning how to make baskets. Once my granddaughter gets a a certain age that I think she can handle the scissors and the knives and everything else, I'm gonna teach her how to do it. I taught my children and, my son, Marvin, and my daughter, Stephanie. And then now I'm teaching their Stephanie's 2 kids.
Sharron:So it's a tradition that hopefully keeps going on that never stop.
Courtney:Other islanders celebrated for their basket weaving skills are Yvonne Grovner, who taught the late Herbert Jerome Dixon, who taught my brother how to make his first sweetgrass basket when he was 10 years old shortly after our family moved to the island. Sapelo's basket weavers are a part of a legacy that include people whose names we may never know. I'm grateful to Sharron for sharing her memories with us. As we move on from this journey into the world of basket weaving on Sapelo Island, we hope you tune in for the next episode where we delve into one of the medicinal plant uses found on the island and uncover the healing traditions of this culturally rich coastal ecosystem. This podcast is brought to you by University of Georgia Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant.
Courtney:Supplemental materials about the native plants discussed in this episode can be found at gacoast.uga.edu/podcast
