Grass Roots Basket

Details

The delicately woven Grass Roots Basket is a beautiful multi-functional piece for the home. Store your favorite blankets in it. Place it by the entry for extra storage. Or use it as a laundry basket in the bedroom.

Editors' Note

Within the many nations of the African continent, there are a vast number of traditions, techniques and approaches to the art of weaving baskets, such as those of the Malawi and Buhera traditions. Time tested and highly sophisticated, many of these continue to this day, along with newer traditions founded in the Americas and elsewhere in the wake of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and other moments of African migration. Sweetgrass baskets, made in the South Carolina Low Country by the Gullah and Geechee communities, for example, maintain the tradition of sewing together tightly coiled ropes of needlegrass rush with palmetto leaf to create dazzling patterns in a wide variety of basket types. During enslavement however, those under bondage had little time to engage in lengthy creative projects — though some, like ceramicist David Drake did just that. In general, far simpler baskets, like our Grass Roots Basket, were woven and used in the daily tasks of towing goods. Examples of such baskets, woven from available materials such as wood strips and featuring handles for easier use are contained within the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.