Big Percy Dwarfs the Competition

Sweetgrass basketry, a centuries-old art form with Central and West African roots, thrives in Gullah Geechee communities around Charleston and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, where descendants of enslaved Africans from plantations along the lower Atlantic coast have lived for centuries. Originally created for practical farming tasks such as rice harvesting and water transport, these sewn baskets (not woven, as is often mistakenly claimed) have become popular with tourists visiting the Lowcountry, where they’re available for purchase at area markets and roadside stands.

Alston, who married into a basket-making family, received blessings from his wife’s grandmother, Mary Jane Manigault, to continue this craft. He’s also teaching his two daughters, preserving the tradition into its sixth generation. While the market for his family’s sweetgrass baskets remains significant, Alston’s more sculptural works have defined his personal style and garnered widespread attention. 

“Percy has the most unique everything,” Alston jokes, noting that many of Percy’s signature decorative elements are his new interpretations of age-old techniques. The seven large loops in the middle, which he refers to as the “seven oceans,” seem weightless, miraculously holding the dense halves of the piece together. Percy’s handle, resembling a double helix, took an entire month to create, with Alston spending 10 to 14 hours a day sewing. (“Harvesting time is totally separate,” he says of the invisible labor behind collecting the materials for his work. “But we don’t ever talk about the harvest. No one cares.”)