Sweetgrass baskets by Annabelle Ellis

My auction buddy Janet had missed the two baskets entirely. I had, too, on my first walk-through at the auction house – a new one for me but a return spot for her. They were sweetgrass baskets handmade by African American women in South Carolina.

The baskets had been placed one in front of the other like two children in a row. I was surprised that I had missed them, their colors so bright among other very disparate and dark-toned items. But this auction house was chocked so full of stuff that it was easy to rush past a lot of it. Not far away from the baskets were some old wooden tool chests that despite their dust and dirt were still amazing.

The baskets, though, seemed a little out of place among the antique and vintage items. They were new handicrafts with very little age and no wear on them. It was as if someone had just bought them on a trip through Charleston, SC, and dropped them off at the auction house.

They still bore the tag of the Mount Pleasant, SC, women who made them:

Handwoven by Annabelle Ellis and members of her family. Baskets are sold Monday through Saturday at the corner of Broad and Meeting Streets, Charleston, SC. (Baskets are made using sweetgrass, rush, palmetto fronds, pine needles).

I had aways loved sweetgrass baskets from afar, and was determined to buy one on any road trip south. I got my chance a couple years ago when I traveled to Florida with a friend to dispose of her aunt’s belongings. We stopped at a roadside stand outside Charleston where I bought a small basket (the only one I could afford) that now holds keys and knick-knacks.

The most beautiful of the sweetgrass baskets I’ve ever seen were at a Philadelphia Museum of Art Crafts Show some years ago. I recall stopping in my tracks as I approached a booth with baskets that were simply dazzling. They were large baskets, as I recalled, in designs that would’ve looked awesome on a table in my living room.

Alas, the prices – they were selling in the hundreds and thousands of dollars – put them out of my reach. I don’t recall the exhibitor’s name, but I suspect that it was a perennial named Mary Jackson. Each year, I’d look for her baskets and practically drool over them.

Sweetgrass-weaving was an art form brought from West Africa to the Lowcountry of South Carolina’s coast during the late 17th century, according to the 2006 book “Sweetgrass Baskets and the Gullah Tradition” by Joyce V. Coakley, who grew up learning about them from an older cousin in Mount Pleasant. Enslaved Africans were said to have made baskets of palmetto leaves and grasses to sift rice and hold dry goods. Basket-making also could be found on the Georgia coast.

After families set up their own households following the Civil War, they needed storage containers, so more baskets were made. Around the turn of the 20th century, the basket-weavers of Mount Pleasant started making them to sell in Charleston, according to the book. Some were also being sold in New York stores and galleries.

A woman named Ida Jefferson Wilson was credited with setting up the first roadside basket-selling stand on Highway 17 in the 1930s. By the 1960s, some basket-makers were receiving awards for their designs at craft shows, and began offering workshops.

The baskets are very mainstream, desired, collectible and valuable. Several years ago, an exhibition of 200 baskets and more toured along the East Coast – starting in Charleston, with a stop at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art.

Jackson, who learned to make baskets at age 4 from her mother and grandmother, won a MacArthur Foundation genius award in 2008. Her beautiful baskets are in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of African American History in Detroit, the American Craft Museum in New York and White House Collection of Arts and Crafts.

Watch a video of her explaining how she evolved a new design from a traditional fanner basket that she titled “Unfinished.” You can also listen to her speak about the basket-making process in a 2011 interview.

The baskets resemble a form of sewing – which I can relate to since I sewed a lot once – with a material much different and more difficult than cloth. And like sewing, it can take some time and effort. According to one site, one small basket can take up to four hours and sell for around $20. Others can go for thousands of dollars or more. In the video, Jackson talked about spending some time figuring out how to make the “Unfinished” basket, and expecting to spend about a year on a 5-foot basket for a client.

The two sweetgrass baskets at auction were average size and the designs were pretty basic, but I expected them to sell well. After having seen them, Janet was intent on bidding. So, we waited around through the sale of furniture, accordions, guitars, advertising signs and more until the auctioneer finally got to them.

For a split second, we both heard him start the bidding at $5 and got excited. Then a staffer interrupted him to say that he had a phone bidder. With that, the auctioneer started the bidding at $200. (An auction-goer seated in front of us explained that phone bids and left-bids had to start at $200, but the auction-house website says $100). That just about floored us, and knocked Janet – and anyone else in the room – completely out. The basket sold to the phone bidder for $200.

With a start bid of $200, I guess the person really wanted those baskets. Sure, they had their tag and provenance, but at this type of mom-and-pop auction, you expect to pay less not more.