My Grandmother’s Echo: Inheriting an Inquiry into Strawcraft
“I have often been asked why, in my own life and work, I have felt such a desperate need to know and assimilate the experiences of earlier black women writers, most of them unheard of by you and by me … As it turned out — and this should not have surprised me — I found I was in need of something that only one of them could provide.” Alice Walker, Saving the Life That Is Your Own
“How do we write ourselves in? It falls far beyond simple insertion; the erasures are far too deep. Insertion presumes a simple forgetfulness, an oversight, a neglecting of the obvious. Insertion assumes a presence. It implies a shared mode of history, a common belonging to a collective archive, and an agreed-upon understanding of what it means to be an artist.” Sherry Farrell Racette, “I Want to Call Their Names in Resistance”
“To write this piece I have relied on fragments, bits and pieces of information found here and there. Sweet late-night calls to Mama to see if she ‘remembers when.’ Memories of old conversations coming back again and again, memories like reused fabric in a crazy quilt, contained and kept for the right moment. I have gathered and remembered. I wanted one day to record and document so that I would not participate in further erasure of the aesthetic legacy and artistic contributions of black women.” bell hooks, Aesthetic Inheritances
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Do you believe in fate? I walked into the National Archives of The Bahamas on a December morning in 2019, after requesting special permission to return early to my hometown, Nassau, Bahamas, to do research for an upcoming essay. I chanced or rather walked straight towards the framed title, “Thelma Eula Cambridge” and a book in a glass case.
The book on display in the archive lobby became known to me as the thesis of my grandmother, Thelma Eula Cambridge, titled Growing functional arts in the Bahamas. The text, handwritten, hand-plaited, and handbound all by my grandmother herself, aimed to bring attention to the particularities of Bahamian craft, with a brief section on the work of steelpan drumming and a focus on strawcraft. Rooted in knowledge inherited from enslaved Africans and Indigenous Peoples, strawcraft is an artistic practice where plant fibres are woven or “plaited” into lengths of material that can be used to create a plethora of objects including bags, mats, shoes, and hats. My grandmother wrote the text in 1968 as her final project to complete her programme at Bahamas Teacher’s College, interviewing straw artisans and vendors and collecting popular print media in her research.
My path to the text was entirely coincidental, and as such I approach my grandmother’s work, and therefore strawcraft, with a particular reverence. According to my family, the work was considered lost after my grandmother passed away in 2007, until I came across the volume in 2019. As an art historian interested in Black art histories, Caribbean art history, and transatlantic slavery studies, it is difficult to describe the electricity I felt meeting the text for the first time. I experienced the second-hand joy of my family’s rediscovery as well as a simultaneous sense of belonging and encouragement at the possibility of building on the work of my own grandmother, on a subject that has dearly touched my own life. My relationship to strawcraft motivates me to understand the artistic practice from the perspective of community, family, and multi-generational legacy with a deep respect for the labour and ingenuity of Black Bahamian women.
I came to understand through archival research, interviews, and my grandmother’s writings that the full complexity of strawcraft is incredibly expansive. From the plaiting of raw palm top to intricate raffia embroidery to the assembly of a common straw clutch sold by a local vendor, strawcraft reveals a rich history of knowledge and practiced skill that masquerades as ease.
Through my Curatorial and Art Writing Fellowship at NLS, my research has also expanded to consider the connectivity of straw work within the broader Caribbean region. Similar issues of lack of preservation, systematic loss, fear of loss of heritage, and a scramble towards preservation are being experienced, in part due to an anti-black and colonial neglect that has historically excluded and restricted the practices of the enslaved and Indigenous.
At the same time, there are dedicated people all around the Caribbean and in The Bahamas who have actively embraced straw work and its legacy and continue to do so. Workshops and courses that teach how to weave, plait, and construct; projects that showcase strawcraft’s multiplicity; artists who pay to tribute the legacy of straw in their own lives and families; artisans who create hundreds of straw objects, reinventing timeless designs and patterns.
I seek to create a project that joins the archival and contemporary, providing another outlet to celebrate strawcraft. I am grateful for the resources and support NLS and my team of mentors have given me as I continue to bring this project into form. I trace the footsteps of my grandmother and the plaiters, artists, vendors, researchers, and writers who give strength to my own creativity.
