Stitched Together

For South Carolinian Andrea "Annie" Cayetano-Jefferson, sewing sweetgrass baskets ties her to generations of Gullah people, including her mother and daughter

- BETSY CRIBB WATSON

"MY AUNT LINDA used to tell me, 'Nobody has to make a basket. It's a want, and if you want to make it, you're going to have to make it right.' I was 5 or 6 years old, but I was determined. I wanted it bad," laughs Andrea "Annie" CayetanoJefferson, a sixth-generation Gullah sweetgrass artist who lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

Basket weaving is one of the oldest African art forms still practiced in the United States, says Cayetano-Jefferson, and it can be traced back to enslaved people. "Because of our ancestors' knowledge of rice harvesting, they already knew how to make baskets when they came here, so they just used materials similar to what they'd found in Africa's rice-growing regions," she says. In coastal South Carolina, that meant using a combination of bulrush and split oak. Bulrush (which is pulled from the marsh) still makes up the vessels today, along with sweetgrass, palmetto fronds, and longleaf pine needles.