Sophia Michelen | Freelance writer
Lynette D. Youson slowly stitches a bundle of South Carolina sweetgrass into a coil. The work begins at the center: a tight spiral anchored with palmetto, each stitch pulled through in a rhythm that has been repeated for generations. The basket expands outward, row by row, widening into a form that once carried rice from fields, held produce in kitchens and stored grain in homes across the Lowcountry.
For Youson, a fifth-generation sweetgrass basket weaver outside Charleston, that center point is not just a starting place—it is a lineage.
“I learned sitting at my mother’s side, watching her hands,” she says. “She learned from her mother, and her mother before that. That’s how it continues—you watch, you do, and then you teach.”…