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.

Comments

Althea McNish, Trinidadian Textile Designer

By Katrina Filer Born in Trinidad but living in the foggy, grey world of London in the 50s, Althea McNish brought the colorful inspiration of her birthplace to the British textile scene. She was descended from former Black slaves who had fought for the British in the war of 1812, and she was born while Trinidad was still a colony, 38 years before they gained independence. Her impressionist-style prints based in the Caribbean's natural beauty were groundbreaking, pushing the way that her contemporaries looked at fashion, interior design, or anything else that could hold a pattern. Surrounded by a culture that constantly appropriated the art of its colonies (Trinidad included) and deep in a white male-dominated field, McNish still found her place in the fashion and textile industry, wielding genre-defining abstractions of tropical and floral beauty. Angela Cobbinah. Althea McNish in 2008. Photography courtesy of the Camden New Journal. McNish's early life in Trinidad was charact...

John Warren Moutoussamy

John Warren Moutoussamy John Warren Moutoussamy studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology and graduated in 1948, a mere 26 years after McKissack & McKissack became the first black-owned architecture firm in the United States (Fazzare and Olson). Moutoussamy studied under Mies Van Der Rohe, and Mies’ strong exterior style and structural design is evident in his work throughout the Chicago area. After finishing his education, Moutoussamy became a partner in the Chicago Architecture Firm, Dubin Dubin Black & Moutoussamy, making him the first African-American in U.S. history to become part of a major established architecture firm (Goldsborough). Later in his career, Moutoussamy also played prominent positions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Loyola University, and the Chicago Plan Commission As an architect, Moutoussamy followed the style of Mies Van Der Rohe in many of his wor...

Beverly Loraine Greene (1915-1957)

Beverly Loraine Greene was born October 4 th , 1915 in Chicago Illinois. Although she was born during a time where she was not accepted in the professional world she never stopped moving towards her goal of becoming an architect. In 1936, Greene made history by becoming the first African American female to earn a bachelor of science degree in architectural engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Although she was “ amidst a sea of white male faces” at school, Beverly was known for having a calm presence that allowed her to focus on her difficult education (Illinois.edu). After graduating she began to search for a job in the industry, albeit the many obstacles in her way. Although it was difficult to find work at first due to racial discrimination, Greene’s talent and drive landed her a job with the Chicago Housing authority. This made her the first African American to be a part of the Chicago Housing authority, a corporation that oversees the housing in the cit...

Design History Decolonized

Search This Blog