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07/11/2004:

"Culture weaves past into present, future"

The baskets, made of sweetgrass and bull rushes, are no longer used for hauling crops and storing goods.

Once, before synthetics and assembly lines, they filled a basic need. Men gathered the thick, tough grasses that grow in the marshes, while women sewed them into the needed shapes and sizes.

Now vendors sell the baskets at stands up and down the South Carolina coastline -- as art. The baskets commemorate a distinct culture, called Gullah, which would emerge over the last 300-plus years on barrier islands from Cape Fear, N.C., to northern Florida as a melding of West African and American customs, forged in isolation and tempered by the legacy of slavery.

Full Article : islandpacket.com