Tracing Liberian Cultural Echoes In US Lowcountry Baskets

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A 2025 Craft Archive Fellow has explored the connections between Liberian culture and the Gullah Geechee craft tradition of fannuh baskets in the US Lowcountry, particularly on St. Helena Island, South Carolina.

During a June 2021 visit to St. Helena Island, the fellow observed similarities between the rhythm and cadence of Gullah speech and Liberian accents. The researcher, born in Liberia with Bassa ancestry from the Grand Bassa, Montserrado, and River Cess regions, also noted a resemblance between rice-fanning women depicted at the historic Penn Center and women observed in Liberia. These fannuh baskets, woven from local grasses, palmetto, and other plant materials found in the Sea Islands, are a defining craft of the Gullah Geechee culture.

The fellow's research extends the common focus on African Americans tracing ancestry to the African continent by exploring lineages in the reverse direction. This approach aligns with Saidiya Hartman's perspective in her 2008 book, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, which highlights“the commoners, the unwilling and coerced migrants who created a new culture in the hostile world of the Americas and fashioned themselves again, making possibility out of dispossession.” The project emphasizes how language, dance, food, and material traditions reflect cultural survival and adaptation.

Dancer and anthropologist Pearl Primus, who directed the Konoma Kende Performing Arts Center in Monrovia from the late 1950s to early 1960s, also noted these cultural links. Primus reflected:“In Liberia, I found the very root of... dances like the Charleston, Lindy Hop and the old plantation dances... the same used during religious services in some churches in the South.” This article is part of a series on underrepresented craft histories, developed through a collaboration between the Center for Craft and the 2025 Craft Archive Fellows.

Source: Hyperallergic

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