Vintage Gullah Sweet Grass Bread Tray Basket CHARLESTON Folk Art

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Vintage Gullah Sweet Grass Bread Tray Basket CHARLESTON Folk Art :
$41.00

Selling a very fine and tightly woven vintage Mt. Pleasant / Charleston, SC Gullah made Sweet Grass Bread Tray Basket MEASURES 14 3/4\" X 10 1/2\" AND IS 2\" DEEP EXCELLENT CONDITION. Signed underneath is, \"Emily Haynes 11 9 8.\" The traditional coiled Gullah style sweetgrass basket was made in the South Carolina Low Country in or around Mt. Pleasant in Charleston County and on the Sea Islands - a group of islands off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and North Florida. The sweetgrass basket art form was brought to this country in the latter half of the seventeenth century by West Africans who adapted the basketry traditions of their homeland to the available indigenous materials to make work baskets that were needed on the rice plantations. This type of basket is coil-sewn rather than plaited or twined. The sharpened end of a silver spoon or chicken leg bone \"sewing bone\" was used to create openings in the coil as stitching progressed. The most common material used as the core bundle in early work baskets was black rush (Juncus roemerianus) known locally as bulrush, rushel or needlegrass. The coils were bound with strips of white oak (Quercus alba) or saw palmetto stem (Serenoa repens). Sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia filipes) commonly known as purple muhly grass became popular only at the beginning of the twentieth century, when makers in Mount Pleasant began making \"show baskets\" to sell to the tourists along Route 17. Later light duty baskets are commonly made of Sweetgrass stitched with palm leaf (Sabal palmetto). Long Leaf Pine needles (Pinus palustris) or bulrush may be added to the coil as a decorative (dark colored) element. Pick up in Pompton Plains, NJ or will ship via parcel post at buyer\'s expense.