Binya – native of the island; one with long island ances­try; an elder life­long res­i­dent.¹

Comya – one who comes from else­where and takes up res­i­dence on the island; an immi­grant; one whose ances­try is not of the island; one who came after the bridge.²

Binya | Comya is the third in a series of Wolf-Gor­don projects spot­light­ing art, design, and cul­tur­al her­itage in their social con­text. It cel­e­brates the exquis­ite cre­ations — sweet­grass bas­kets, cast nets, iron work and paint­ing — of the Gul­lah Geechee, descen­dants of enslaved West Africans who merged African cul­ture and lan­guage with Low Coun­try influ­ences, a coastal region stretch­ing from south­ern North Car­oli­na to north­ern Florida.

These Africans, who were forcibly tak­en between the 1500s and 1800s, car­ried spe­cial­ized exper­tise in rice, cot­ton, and indi­go cul­ti­va­tion, fish­ing, iron­work, and tex­tile arts — skills that shaped the south­east­ern US coastal econ­o­my and beyond. Charleston was the entry point for 40% of enslaved Africans, mak­ing South Car­oli­na cen­tral to this history.

After the Civ­il War, many Gul­lah — the descen­dants of these enslaved Africans — remained on for­mer plan­ta­tions, pre­serv­ing agri­cul­tur­al knowl­edge, spir­i­tu­al prac­tices, and craft tra­di­tions. The geo­graph­ic iso­la­tion of the Sea Islands allowed unique lan­guage, music, cui­sine, agri­cul­ture and design tra­di­tions to flour­ish large­ly undis­turbed for gen­er­a­tions despite eco­nom­ic hard­ships and sys­temic inequities, cre­at­ing one of the most dis­tinc­tive African Amer­i­can cul­tures of his­to­ry, mem­o­ry, and mean­ing in the Unit­ed States.

Since the mid-20^th cen­tu­ry, real estate devel­op­ment has sig­nif­i­cant­ly trans­formed the Low Coun­try, erod­ing cul­tur­al land­scapes and intro­duc­ing rapid change. Yet Gul­lah arts, archi­tec­ture, sto­ry­telling, and lan­guage endure through descen­dants who con­tin­ue to hon­or their ances­tors’ tra­di­tions. With Binya | Comya, Wolf-Gor­don pays trib­ute to this resilience through pat­terns, mate­ri­als, tex­tures, and imagery cre­at­ed by Gul­lah descen­dants and inspired by arti­facts across South Carolina.

For cen­turies, sweet­grass bas­kets have been indis­pens­able for the har­vest of rice, and are used to sep­a­rate hulls, store grain, and car­ry food. Sweet­grass, nat­u­ral­ly pli­able yet durable, responds to the sewer’s rhythm, pro­duc­ing objects of grace, func­tion, and sym­bol­ic mean­ing through patience, cre­ativ­i­ty, and inher­it­ed skill.

Lynette You­son, a fifth-gen­er­a­tion bas­ket sew­er taught by her great-grand­moth­er, blends tra­di­tion with moder­ni­ty. Her work is known for pre­cise sewing, strong, clean forms, and bal­anced com­po­si­tions. Sown, adapt­ed from a tra­di­tion­al rice fan­ner bas­ket, hon­ors this pre­ci­sion and dis­ci­pline. For the wall­cov­er­ing, bas­ket rows were rotat­ed 90 degrees to form a strik­ing ver­ti­cal pat­tern with rhyth­mic geom­e­try, struc­tur­al har­mo­ny, and a dis­tinct­ly con­tem­po­rary edge.

Angela Stoneworth, an eighth-gen­er­a­tion bas­ket mak­er from Mount Pleas­ant, learned the art from her grand­moth­er but forged a dis­tinc­tive voice through elab­o­rate sculp­tur­al forms, inven­tive shapes, and dec­o­ra­tive flour­ish­es. Princess & Queen is a toile com­po­si­tion that Wolf-Gor­don Design Stu­dio com­piled from Stoneworth’s Princess Leia and Throne. The works are set in Low Coun­try scenes of pal­met­tos, oaks draped in Span­ish moss, shore birds, and sub­trop­i­cal flo­ra; they merge craft with sto­ry­telling, land­scape mem­o­ry, and region­al identity.

Dar­ryl Stoneworth, a ​“comya” from New York who moved to Mount Pleas­ant in 1996, learned bas­ketry from Angela after their mar­riage, bring­ing his own sen­si­bil­i­ty and exper­i­men­ta­tion to the craft. His bas­kets are the foun­da­tion for Pin­wheel Fan­nas, a medal­lion wall­cov­er­ing fea­tur­ing three pin­wheel bas­ket designs. Print­ed at full scale, the pat­tern retains orig­i­nal col­ors, with del­i­cate white accents in the spac­ing to add dimen­sion, light­ness, and spa­tial depth.

Cro­cheted fish­ing nets, or cast nets, required strength, patience, and dex­ter­i­ty to cre­ate. Joseph Legree, Jr. (1924 – 2017), a skilled water­man, learned net mak­ing as a child sit­ting in a bateau at high tide. Cast presents a pho­to­graph­ic mur­al of his hand-cro­cheted shrimp net, shown near­ly life-size. Shot against black seam­less paper, the folds and radi­al sym­me­try are a dra­mat­ic por­trait of a fad­ing tra­di­tion as cot­ton nets have van­ished from con­tem­po­rary practice.

West African iron­work tra­di­tions date back to the 9^th cen­tu­ry BCE. In the Amer­i­c­as, black­smiths forged both tools and intri­cate archi­tec­tur­al details. Charleston and Savan­nah fea­ture Gul­lah-craft­ed gates, bal­conies, and fences. Wrought draws inspi­ra­tion from these iron pat­terns, its com­plex curves and con­sis­tent geom­e­try reflect­ing extra­or­di­nary skill, her­itage, and cul­tur­al strength.

Binya | Comya also show­cas­es murals of paint­ings by artist Amiri Far­ris. Echoes of Sea Island His­to­ry draws on Gul­lah land­scapes and her­itage in indi­go and earth pig­ments, while Rhythms in the Tapes­try of Time bridges past and present with a com­po­si­tion filled with vibrant col­or, lay­ered tex­ture, sym­bol­ism, and emotion.

Orches­trat­ed by the Cre­ative Depart­ment of Wolf-Gor­don, the orig­i­nal works in Binya | Comya were curat­ed, pho­tographed, and manip­u­lat­ed through tech­niques of mur­al design and pat­tern engi­neer­ing to be real­ized in the unlike­ly medi­um of dig­i­tal­ly print­ed com­mer­cial wall­cov­er­ings. Fol­low­ing its debut at HD Expo, Las Vegas, May 6 – 8, Binya | Comya is now installed at Wolf-Gor­don Head­quar­ters, 333 Sev­enth Avenue, New York City, and remains on view through April 2026. All works are avail­able through the Wolf-Gor­don Curat­ed Col­lec­tion admin­is­tered by WG Cus­toms Lab.

A full text appears in the exhi­bi­tion catalog.

_{1 Emory S. Camp­bell, Gul­lah Cul­tur­al Lega­cies, (Hilton Head, SC: Gul­lah Her­itage Con­sult­ing Ser­vices, 2008), p. 22.}

_{2 Camp­bell, p. 25}