a sweetgrass basket maker I met
Let me introduce you to Georgette Wright Sanders. She has been making sweetgrass baskets for about 15 years, in traditional forms as well as some innovative forms of her own design. She combines her own pottery as well as beads and found objects like deer antlers into her baskets. They are treasures.
As a child of someone who grew up in the Low Country, and who spent time nearly every summer visiting family in Colleton County and the beaches between Myrtle and Pawleys, I’ve known about sweetgrass baskets all my life. But I don’t have any, and I’d thought I might acquire something while in the Charleston area.
This image by Ted(bobosh_t), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Shortly after crossing the Cooper River via the beautiful Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, I saw signs designating seven miles of US-17 as the Sweetgrass Basket Makers Highway. I didn’t realize that Mount Pleasant, a community next to Charleston, is the home of sweetgrass basket making, but it is. They have a brochure all about it.
All along the highway, on both sides, were small wooden structures in various stages of dereliction. Each one was about 10′ square in plan, with open grillwork on the sides and simple shed roofs. None of them had any product or people inside, though a few had fairly elaborate signs with names carved or painted. I saw about 3 dozen in total between Mount Pleasant and McClellanville, where I was camping. I didn’t know the story on those structures, but I learned later, from this story by Tom Poland, that these shacks had been where sweetgrass basket makers made and sold their products, when US-17 wasn’t a six-lane highway with narrow shoulders. There is no way I would have stopped at any of those spots, and for damn sure I wouldn’t have spent my days sitting along that road. But until recently that’s exactly what happened.
DEAR PHOTOJOURNALISTS:
Someone really should go document these structures. They won’t be there long, and they tell a story. You’ll need a bright yellow vest and maybe a helper to make sure some fool doesn’t run you and your equipment over, but the images are strong, and I’ll bet the story tellers are still in the area.
But that’s not Georgette’s story, at least it’s not her current story.
I was only in the Charleston area for one full day, and I spent that day at camp catching up on things and enjoying the view, so I never got to the City Market in Charleston or the Waterfront Market in Mount Pleasant, where I might have found basket makers and their wares. I considered going back down the road as I left my campsite, but I was ready to make some progress north, so I abandoned my idea of getting a sweetgrass basket and headed to the beaches of my youth. (Besides, I’d learned the prices of the baskets I admired. As Gran always said, I have “champagne taste with a beer pocketbook”. So I took a right on US17, headed for the next stop.
But a little bit north of McClellanville, on the southbound side, I saw a small concrete block structure, with a table out on the roadside. And a parking area. And baskets on the table. Oooh! Maybe I will meet a basket maker, and maybe even find a basket to take home? I hesitated for a bit, then remembered I’m on an adventure without much of a schedule, so I pulled a u-turn at the next opportunity and parked in front of a shop labeled “By His Design”.
While I was looking at the baskets on the table, a lady came out and asked me if I was interested in seeing the rest of her work. Yes, I am! And I went into her small shop and studio where there were lots of pots as well as baskets.