There are big sweetgrass baskets, but then there is Mount Pleasant artisan Corey Alston’s BIG sweetgrass basket that was unveiled Feb. 19 at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia.
This basket is so big that the museum is entering it as a candidate for the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest basket of its kind on the planet, said the museum’s history curator Ramon Jackson.
At 5 feet high and nearly 4 feet across with 80 pounds of tan sweetgrass and palmetto fronds, red long-leaf pine needles and brown marsh bulrush, the basket represents “the biggest and baddest of my career,” said the 44-year-old Alston, who has been sewing baskets for nearly 25 years.
Alston named this basket “Big Percy” for the intimidating character of the same name in the 1974 movie Uptown Saturday Night.
“I would not say this is the biggest (basket) ever, but this is the first documented” basket of its size, Alston explained to the Charleston City Paper before the basket’s debut in the museum’s Lipscomb gallery.
The museum commissioned Alston to make the basket in the fall of 2024. He started in February 2025. An humbled Alston said another basket maker could have made a basket as large as Big Percy.
“When museums give you the funding and the time, then I think anyone could have done it,” he said.
When Alston married Karen Habersham, he joined a family of basket makers who for five generations has preserved the West African coiled basket tradition. The baskets were originally tools an enslaved workforce used to clean and store rice, a crop that made Charleston the richest city in colonial America. By the 20th century, the baskets morphed into artwork made by Gullah Geechee artisans.
Baskets with a flare
Alston’s baskets are displayed at the International African American Museum (IAAM) in Charleston, the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, and the Mint Museum Uptown in Charlotte.
He is known for large baskets with unique designs.
“People know that baskets have been made for hundreds of years in Charleston,” he said. But he emerged as a young, new innovative male designer who distinguished himself in a craft dominated by women.
Eventually, Alston’s notoriety caught the attention of the state museum, Jackson said.
Jackson and Paul E. Matheny III, the museum’s chief curator and director of curatorial affairs, made an unannounced visit to Alston in the City Market to pitch him on the idea of making a basket for the museum. During that meeting, they invited him to tour the museum and look at its basket collection.
Nearly two months later, Alston toured the museum where he and the staff began to discuss the concept of a basket. Alston asked how large should it be? Jackson pointed to a 4-foot tall roll of foam used to wrap exhibit pieces. Jackson asked Alston: “Can you do something like that?” Jackson recalled that Alston hesitated and his eyes widened.
Jackson said he wanted a large basket to make the statement that “Gullah people have been here, they are going to be here, and you can’t get around it.” He also wanted to push Alston to the limits of his ability. In return the museum has Big Percy, a one-of-kind basket that demonstrates Alston’s genius, he added.
A family affair
Big Percy is expected to be part of an ongoing exhibit through mid-2027, Jackson said. The Big Percy exhibit includes the tools Alston made to make the basket.
When Big Percy became too large for Alston’s lap, he made a cradle for it. As the basket grew, Alston made a turntable to rotate it. He also made a 6-inch-by-6-inch beam to lay it on to prevent the sides from collapsing.
Sweetgrass has become hard to find because of commercial development in the coastal zone, Alston said. To make Big Percy, Alston said he pulled the sweetgrass that’s growing at the IAAM.
Karen Habersham Alston’s grandmother, Mary Jane Manigault, who was also a basket maker, invited Alston in 2005 to join the family business at the City Market. Alston’s mother-in-law, Mary Jane Habersham, worked in the market before she retired in the early 2000s. Alston works daily in the market with his sister-in-law, Carlene Habersham.
Mary Jane Manigault made baskets until the year she passed away at the age 98 in 2012.
“I have always honored my in-laws for the gift they gave me by letting me” in the business, Corey Alston said.
Manigault’s baskets are among the museum’s collection. One of them will be displayed with Big Percy, Jackson said. The juxtaposition of the two, one large and the other small, closes the circle on generations of basketmakers in the Manigault-Habersham-Alston family.
Jackson said, “When I look at Big Percy, I think of it as a piece that is an example of countless generations of artistry, technical skill and brilliance that has been passed down from West Africa, across the Middle Passage to South Carolina and ending up here with Corey.”
Alston said he and his wife, Karen, “have two daughters who learned sweetgrass basket-weaving at the ages of 6 and 7. They are now old enough to keep the art alive as sixth-generation sweetgrass basket makers.”
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