Work Basket, Sapelo Island, Georgia, 1850-1900
Work Basket, Sapelo Island, Georgia, 1850-1900
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- Description
- The Lowcountry (coastal) region of the Carolinas and Georgia and the nearby Atlantic Sea Islands were and continue to be home to a distinctive regional African American culture that is now recognized as the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. By the mid-1700s, rice became the dominant cash crop and plantation owners wanted enslaved people from West Africa who already knew how to cultivate rice. The work of these enslaved Africans made the Carolina rice planters the richest planters in the American colonies. The West African peoples knew how to make coiled grass baskets for a variety of use. They innovated the method by using materials similar to those at home in their new environment. This bulrush work basket was made on Sapelo Island, Georgia, sometime between 1850 and 1900. At one time, baskets like these were common on working farms on the coast and in fancy homes around Savannah, but today baskets from the 1800s are very rare.
- Object Name
- Basket
- place made
- United States: Georgia, Sapelo Island, Sapelo Island
- Physical Description
- fiber, plant (overall material)
- grass, swamp (overall material)
- coiled (overall production method/technique)
- Measurements
- overall: 12 cm x 36 cm x 36 cm; 4 23/32 in x 14 3/16 in x 14 3/16 in
- ID Number
- CL.401993
- catalog number
- 401993
- accession number
- 251760
- Credit Line
- Dr. Baruch S. Blumberg
- subject
- Blacks
- African American
- See more items in
- Home and Community Life: Ethnic
- Many Voices, One Nation
- Exhibition
- Many Voices, One Nation
- Exhibition Location
- National Museum of American History
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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