Mary Jackson, Gullah/Geechee Basket Weaver

Mary Jackson is a basketweaver who learned to weave baskets in her childhood in Charleston South Carolina from her mother. She took up basket making again when her young son's asthma forced her to leave her job to give him care at home.

Her work carries on the tradition of Gullah/Geechee sweetgrass basketweaving. This craft originated in the Carolina low country among African American slaves and their ancestors who remained in the coastal islands along the southern part of The United States Atlantic coast. Baskets made in this tradition use many of the same techniques as baskets made along the western coast of Africa, where the majority of slaves in the Americas were abducted in the first leg of the Triangular trade.

Though the patterns and techniques traveled in the minds of enslaved Africans to the Carolina Coast, the materials and tools used were improvised and refined over the decades, using locally available sweet grass, long leaf pine needles, and palmetto palm fronds.

The baskets were first utilitarian -- winnowing baskets called Fanner Baskets -- were used to clean rice, and other basket styles were used for storage, water carrying, and food preservation. In 1931, Lottie Swinton became the first Gullah weaver to set up a stall along newly paved Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant SC. Over the next 50 years, as traffic slowly grew, so did the demand for baskets, and the number of informal stalls along Highway 17 grew along with it.

When Mary Jackson got into the game again, she brought with it a minimalist sensibility from her time working in New York, and inspiration she got from MOMA and other modern art museums she saw there.

This nuance, along with her commitment to perfection and refinement of the craft was what judges cited when they awarded her a MacArthur "Genius" grant in 2008.

She is working to teach others this craft, as this video clearly shows.

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