Weaving a legacy

Over the summer, sweetgrass basket-weaver Henrietta Snype, 57, found out that the next generation can be hard to pin down.

Young would-be basketmakers spent weeks away on vacations, participated in organized sports and other activities. A wealth of electronics, including video games, cell phones and MP3 players, competed for the youngsters' attention.

But somehow, 17 children managed to sit down and weave their first sweetgrass basket in The Next Generation project, a grant-funded program taught through The Avery Research Center for African-American History and Culture.

The baskets made since the class began in April will be part of a sweetgrass exhibit, "Sweetgrass: A Living Legacy of Family and Community," at the Avery, opening at 6 tonight.

Snype launched the Next Generation project with the idea that the twice-monthly lessons at the Avery Research Center, a division of the College of Charleston, would attract children from traditional basketmaking communities in Mount Pleasant. However, the workshop attracted students from throughout the area, including children of a Daniel Island doctor, a native of Africa.

Deborah Wright, coordinator of special projects at Avery, said, "It's my understanding that people feared the art might die."

Baskets were traditionally made by people living in the Mount Pleasant area between the neighborhoods of Four Mile and Eight Mile, the practice spreading with marriage.

In 1999, Snype said, just 40 basket stands existed along U.S. Highway 17. Some weavers moved to the Charleston City Market and other tourist destinations, in search of better locations to sell their wares. Basket-weavers also found a new home in Mount Pleasant's Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Pavilion.

Today, more than 70 stands are along the U.S. Highway today, thanks to an overlay district that protects them in the highway's right of way, but about 10 of them go unused, according to surveys by the town of Mount Pleasant.

Snype of Mount Pleasant's Four Mile community remembers when as many as 150 weavers sold sweetgrass baskets from highway stands.

Snype learned to sew watching her grandmother, Elizabeth Coakley Johnson, from the floor. It wasn't a choice. She couldn't play until the stitches looked right. Sewing a complete basket was forbidden until she wove a base with perfect coils.

"One day you might need to do this to survive," Snype said her grandmother told her. "Now here I am surviving."

Snype instructs students across the tri-county area through artist-in-residency programs, providing students with the basket's first coil and allowing them to weave the rest.

Wright said Avery operates on a tight budget and gets a lot of its support from the community.

Basket-weaving classes can be expensive and materials hard to obtain.

A recent artist-in-residency program sponsored by Creative Spark for students at Sanders-Clyde Elementary students cost more than $1,500, counting supplies and teaching time.

Snype said she has to ask the men to gather palmetto fronds and sweetgrass well in advance. You can't just order it, she said. Then she and her daughter, Latrelle Snype, weave a starter, the basket's first coil.

Unlike her grandmother, Snype allows students to make minor mistakes, coaxing them to correct sloppy work immediately.

At the recent Sanders-Clyde program, elementary students worked on basket coils for five days during 50-minute art periods. The weaving was part of an integrated curriculum in which students learned about South Carolina history.

In the brochure "History of Sweetgrass Baskets," M. Jeannette Gailliard Lee writes that basketmakers passed the weaving knowledge from generation to generation, each artist developing an individual style.

Snype uses tightly wound small coils in her basket, a characteristic she picked up from her grandmother.

Reach Jessica Johnson at 937-5921 or jjohnson@postandcourier.com.