Black Material Geographies

Episode 4

The Lacebark Tree, Pt. 2

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

Crochet and knitted products are embedded into everyday Jamaican life and culture. From hats and caps Rastafarians wear, to table cloths, and dresses crocheted with black, green, and gold yarn. Using our hands to create symbols of our culture and heritage has been a practice for generations throughout the Black diaspora.

Grandmothers like mine and mothers are the ones passing these traditions down by making clothing, blankets, doilies, needlepoint art, and much more for everyone in the family. These traditions predate the creation of Jamaica as a nation state, but are born from the physical landscape and peoples who have inhabited the island. 200 years ago, forests in Jamaica were filled with the Lagetta tree, also called the lace-bark tree. Long before my grandmother was born, indigenous Tainos were using the inner bark of the tree to make rope, baskets, and hammocks. But now, not only do we not hear about the lace-bark tree, their presence is rare. So, what actually happened?

This is Black Material Geographies, a show that explores the stories behind forgotten fibers and fabrics you think you know all too well. I'm your host, Teju Adisa-Farrar, speaking to you from the land of the Lenape people. Let's continue the story of the lace-bark tree and Part Two of my conversation with Steeve Buckridge. I invite you to go back and listen to the previous episode to get caught up. Steeve is a professor of African-Caribbean History at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. In this episode, I also speak with Lauren Baccus, the founder of Salt & Aloes, a material archive of the Caribbean.

Just over 100 years ago in 1906, the colonial Jamaican government believed that there were only 12 lace-bark trees left on the entire island. The only other two places in the world where the lace-bark tree grows is Cuba and Hispaniola, but there are none left there either. The British government tried to industrialize the process of harvesting natural lace from this tree after seeing how enslaved Black women wearing it and selling it were doing so in the markets. But their attempts failed because the process is so specific and requires so much tact that it could not be mass produced. A tree that resists colonial manufacturing, it must be magical.

Steeve Buckridge:

So let me put it into context for you to give you an idea of why this tree is so important.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

As I mentioned in the last episode, Steeve found out about the lace-bark tree after most of the world believed it was extinct. As a Jamaican, he became instantly enthralled by the story of the lace-bark tree, a story that resonated with his own personal and professional roots. He began researching the tree to understand when it became a part of Jamaican culture and the history of how enslaved Africans learned to use the tree in a variety of ways.

Steeve Buckridge:

And some of them got the knowledge of trees from the indigenous people, from the Tainos, and they built on it. By a process of trial and error, they would go into the forest, they would cut the bark off the tree, and the tree, by the way, grew primarily in the Cockpit Country areas along the axis of Jamaica.

And they would cut the tree... Sometimes they would cut down the whole tree, or they would cut the bark in a circular fashion like a tube, and then they would peel it all. Then what they would do is that they would soak the bark in water, stick the fingers down in between the outer bark and the inner bark, and pull out the fibers. It's not manufactured. They just pull out the fibers, then they dry it, roll it out, dry it again, dry in the sun, and then they stretch it out, and you end up with natural lace. Can you imagine, Teju? Natural lace, grows on a tree!

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

The lace from the lace-bark tree was used in all types of garments. Even full suits were made out of lace-bark tree lace. And although the tree grew on these other two islands, it was only on Jamaica that it was being used to make garments. Using the Lagetta tree to make natural lace allowed Black enslaved women to have power and agency over their expression, even in the midst of the violent control forced on them during slavery. Wearing lace-bark lace was a way to resist the racist colonial structures they faced on a daily basis.

Steeve Buckridge:

And the argument was that Black women, they can never be refined. They can never be beautiful. And here you have these Black women making these exquisite outfits from lace. It's like slapping them in the face, say, "Hey, look at me. I can be gorgeous. I can be as beautiful as any white woman or any white person can." And the lace-bark industry was dominated by women, controlled by women, and it became so powerful and so influential within the local informal economy that in the 17th Century, you had even the governor of Jamaica taking cravats made from lace-bark and presenting it as gifts to the King in England. In 1851, lace-bark was so famous that Queen Victoria, is said, was presented with an entire dress made from Jamaican lace-bark.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

Jamaican crafting was a fine art form created by enslaved women on the island as early as the 18th Century. Lace-bark was a large part of the material culture, and I dare say, the beginning. Lace-bark was a material culture of resistance. Lauren Baccus, the founder of Salts & Aloes carries on this legacy. She is also a textile artist. And in her own words, she's all things cloth and clothing.

Lauren Baccus:

So, so much of what I do is going back to this about, again, resistance through clothing, what handmade looks like, what Caribbean craft is, and how that defines us. I am definitely a child of the Caribbean, a daughter of the Caribbean. My mother is from Jamaica, and I was raised in Trinidad. So I have those two islands in my immediate history, but we also came from Saint Martin. My grandmother spent time, as well, in Trinidad. We are of the basin, I should say.

But really, as it relates to my own path, it's interesting because our talk today brushes up against this, but my mother was involved in trade and craft in Jamaica. She had a craft store in Jamaica. I remember it very clearly. Actually, I remember the smells very clearly. She dealt with a lot of woven baskets, and there were dolls and books. And it was all so Caribbean-centric, and love-filled, and handmade. Just the wooden items, I can see in my mind. And I traced that. Recently, I had these memories, and I was thinking so much of what I do now is about reclaiming craft, reclaiming material culture, and really embodying, through again, cloth and clothing, this Caribbean experience.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

Lauren's mom and my mom met on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. My mother moved there from California to work at the University of the Virgin Islands in 2010, before returning to Jamaica. Lauren's mom, a writer, was also living there and lecturing at the university. Despite Lauren's own history and the history of the lace-bark tree, like me, Lauren only came to discover the tree recently.

Lauren Baccus:

Lace-bark was, when I was looking over the images, the first moment that I was like, oh, wait... There's something more here. There's something more that I don't think that we've explored fully. And there's a history associated with this material. And it's not just fabric that I deal with, I deal with all materials. But this was a material, material that was unknown to me, but was incredibly fascinating and I thought deserved a little deeper dive on my part. So it's really just a personal exploration into, what is it to be Caribbean? What is it to have a product be called Caribbean?

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

For both of us, part of being Caribbean is understanding the materials that not only come from the Caribbean, but also have informed the cultural expression there. Lace-bark exposes a deep history of crafting, artisanal skill, and resistance in the Caribbean that Lauren also wanted to explore further.

Lauren Baccus:

I don't think that we recognize A) the skill that's involved in this, and I'll talk about that in a second. Because I also wanted to mention that when we're talking about lace-bark, we're talking about traditions that were... And we don't know specifically, because again, sources don't get into the skills that it took to create and learn, and who those skills came from. We can assume, and say to a degree, is that it was a amalgamation of indigenous skills, as well as skills that enslaved people brought from West Africa, this shared knowledge between two groups.

And we can talk too, about the Maroons as well, and how they were able to really tap into that craft. But yeah, we don't talk about the skill that's involved, because the skill that's involved is undermined. And it creates authors... If we get back to the archive, it creates authors out of makers. We talk about resistance, that is contrary to a colonial demand of the time. That, that power not be held by people, women, but also by indigenous and enslaved people. And free people, because the Maroons were a free African community.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

These skills came from decades and decades of Jamaican women working with their environment and turning that environment into beauty. And a lot of that beauty was celebrated in events like Carnival, but it's more than just beauty and celebration.

Lauren Baccus:

Well, the story of Carnival of course is a kind of celebration, but it's active resistance. And I don't think that you can go through the process of understanding Carnival, or even participating, even on a completely superficial level, and not feel like there's something spiritual and also massive, in terms of masses and how powerful it is to move in mass. And a lot of what, in terms of cloth and clothing, that represented for Carnival was a mass movement against a particular system, against particular ways of being seen.

Representing yourself and being able to craft that image, in public especially, is a radical act. And I think especially for us in the Caribbean, who have so been defined historically through clothing, what we could wear, what we could not wear. The Sumptuary Laws that throughout the French-speaking Caribbean in particular, defined what we couldn't could not wear. Therefore, defined who we were in the world. And Trinidad Carnival plays to that directly. There's a lot of storytelling in it, but it also plays to this idea that we, as being able to dress ourselves, are radical beings.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

The lace from a lace-bark tree was critical to storytelling. And even though it is largely unknown, it has played a key role in the material culture of Jamaica. Lauren is one of the people uncovering this culture. Because as we've mentioned, many people thought the tree was extinct. Lauren also turned to Steeve's work to learn more about this magical tree.

Steeve Buckridge:

The tree grows only in three places on the planet. It's found nowhere else in the world, Teju. It's found in Jamaica, in Cuba, and on the island of Hispaniola, nowhere else, which also makes it unique. The tree is also very finicky.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

Finicky is a word Jamaicans love to use to describe things that are specific, fussy, and maybe even a bit difficult. As a child, I remember being called finicky by my mother when I refused to eat something. But the lace-bark tree is environmentally specific. There need to be certain environmental conditions in place to allow for it to grow. This is why it only grew on the three islands in the first place. The environment needed for lace-bark trees to grow cannot be reproduced outside of the geographies from which it naturally grows.

Steeve Buckridge:

There were scientists in the 19th Century who tried to preserve the tree, who tried to grow saplings, and they failed. In fact, Kew Gardens in London, they took saplings back to England. And the tree would grow to a height, but it would not blossom.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

But luckily, people like Steeve didn't believe that the tree was extinct. Steeve started organizing expeditions to find the tree. These expeditions were to Cockpit Country in Jamaica where large forests of lace-bark trees used to grow. Steeve isn't the only academic who went on an expedition to find this tree. Nicola Dillon is a British-Jamaican PhD student who also became enthralled with the lace-bark tree.

Nicola Dillon:

So I found out about lace-bark, I think it was about 2015. And I was doing a MA, a master's, in anthropology and designer materials at University College London, in the UK. And one of our sessions focused on material libraries, and we were taken to Kew Gardens in London, particularly their economic botany collection. But for me, I think at the time I was noticing that a lot of stories that I was hearing were from a very British perspective. If we connect it more broadly and think through a Jamaican lens, that actually maybe some of the ideas that we get to would be different. And so I was quite interested in how it was perceived in Jamaica. Was it still used? And even if it wasn't, how do people understand it? What did they do with it? So I then actually came out to Jamaica.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

Like Steeve, Nicola traveled to Jamaica to try to find this amazing tree. However, unlike the rest of us, Nicola first encountered this tree's history from a colonial British perspective. She was not only trying to learn more about this tree, she was trying to understand it from a Jamaican and colonial perspective. She went to Jamaica, to the Accompong Maroon community to see what she could find.

Nicola Dillon:

I grew up in London, and it's only in the last 10 years that I've really started coming back to Jamaica and really connected. Growing up in the city, I think going into the forest, number one, was just... In awe of this beautiful space that I just never had access to. But initially, people I think were a little bit skeptical.

So initially, I was put in touch with people in Accompong, the Maroon community, but they actually then connected me to other communities. It was there that actually, I found people were... I don't want to say necessarily more open, but were willing to share the knowledge or had knowledge maybe of an industry that went beyond that space. Initially, I think even they were a little bit skeptical of this idea of a researcher, particularly from London, coming in and wanting to have access to this knowledge of something that they obviously do know, but maybe not in that way, or maybe now that the information is not there, or people are less willing to share it.

So initially, I had to build trust. So I think that's actually why I went back over two summers. I went back the first time, and actually somebody went into the forest and brought back a branch or two so that I could actually access the material and play with it. But one of the interesting things was, initially they took off the leaves. So I couldn't actually almost go in and try and find the tree myself, which I respect. Because I do recognize, I think, as someone... Not even someone just coming, knowing of it from my Jamaican heritage, I was coming in the process of doing my masters, a process of doing academic research. And I think that academics often do go into communities. We take knowledge, and then we don't go back.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

So Steeve was actually taken to the tree, and his instincts were correct. The tree was not extinct. It was there in Cockpit Country, surrounded by thousands of trees and plants.

Steeve Buckridge:

And lo and behold, we combed through parts of the Cockpit Country, and that was when we found saplings. I was like a child in a candy shop. I was so excited.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

The lace-bark tree does still exist in Cockpit Country in Jamaica. It is the only island in the world that we know of where this tree still lives. Cockpit Country is one of the most resource-rich parts of the island and an area that has been struggling for environmental protections for decades. The communities in Cockpit Country are warranted in their skepticism and protection of the area. It is crucial to a healthy ecosystem in Jamaica, and it is home to thousands of magnificent plants, birds, and species like the lace-bark tree. Cockpit Country's ecosystem and the Maroon communities there preserve lost histories and cultural practices of Jamaicans.

Nicola Dillon:

I kept connections with them and then went back again the next summer. And at that time, actually, they did take me into the forest to see where it grew. And there, I was able to see small trees. So I think a lot of the research that had come out at that point was saying that the tree was almost extinct, even though I think the Institute of Jamaica, when I did ask about that when talking to them, they said, "No, it's there. It's in the forest." And I think the thing that I noticed when I went into the forest was that it's there, but it almost hides. I feel like it's a tree that's almost quiet, in itself. I think where it grows is not in the parts that we would walk, on the more hilly parts, and areas on the edge of mountains, or the side of the mountain that you're maybe going across. But there were... I saw the tree at all different stages of life.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

It's almost as if this tree tries to preserve itself from continued human exploitation. It has always been there in the forest, and yet most of us would never know. Though whenever Jamaicans do come into contact with it, they immediately understand its usefulness and importance, even if they don't know the history of enslaved women making natural lace from it.

Nicola Dillon:

So I basically had lace-bark in my pocket for two years. And anybody I would meet, I would show it to and ask if they knew it. Because at the time, I wasn't living in Cockpit Country, but I was in rural Jamaica where the tree used to grow, in parts of Saint Catherine, that historically the tree grew there. I think they are now sugar cane fields and things like that, but I took it with me anyway. And I would ask people if they knew it.

People automatically saw particular qualities in it, the idea of this strength, I think. Jamaicans are quite tactile, particularly people who are in rural, so they would always take it, and feel it, and get this sense of it, and then come up with ideas of, oh, that could be this or it could be that. And I really love that, but there was something in it that said to me, there's ultimately a potential in this material that people straight-away see it, and it captures of particular ideas.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

And while Steeve's work is important to the rediscovery of the lace-bark tree's history, he gives the majority of the credit to the women of Jamaica who have been, and continue to be, the stewards of Jamaica's material culture.

Steeve Buckridge:

I want to highlight our Black women, our Jamaican women, the mothers who have kept these traditions going. And that's so important because these women who are making lace-bark, it also provided them with financial independence of men. And this is something that hasn't been studied and more work is needed in this area, but we have to celebrate our Jamaican women, and the crafts, and the skills that our Jamaican... And still have. And it saddens me sometimes that we don't realize how talented we are as a people, as Jamaicans. And we just need to look around. Take the time and look around... Not just music and sports. We dominate those areas. But just in so many other things, we are so gifted.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

Barbara Christian was a scholar and friend of my mother's, as well as my sister's godmother. In an essay, she wrote, "Periphery too, is a word I heard throughout my childhood. For if anything was seen as being at the periphery, it was those small islands, which had neither land mass, nor military power." The Caribbean more broadly, and Caribbean women specifically, are often pushed to the periphery of conversations, if mentioned at all. Lace-bark's history is a story that cannot be told without Jamaican women. They worked with what they had to create beauty and resist colonized standards of femininity.

Lauren Baccus:

No one is spending time on Caribbean craft, but it's something that I'm continually bringing to the conversation. But all over... This is not an exception. All over, we are having these conversations about what is craft? What is art? And again, devaluing craft... When we're really talking often about women's work, which again gets back to textiles and the way that textiles have created a hierarchy, but also have subjugated people to ideas within a society.

Teju Adisa-Farrar :

So what histories do we choose to forget, or simply do not know? And who is left out? Trees that could be used to make cloth from bark existed in parts of tropical Africa, so it is no coincidence that enslaved women in Jamaica taught themselves to harvest the lace-bark tree and make it into clothing and beautiful textiles. They did this in the midst of plantation slavery and colonialism, which deliberately excluded them from aesthetic life and leisure.

This indigenous plant knowledge made its way into the genetic memories of our people. Enslaved Jamaican women made and wore lace, in which the process from plants to garment was not controlled or overseen by Europeans. This was a subversive act born out of creativity and necessity. Grandmothers like mine, and hers before, taught their children knitting, sewing, crocheting, mat-making, and basketry to carry on this legacy of self-directed expression and creativity. My grandmother crocheted and knitted out of love for the generations that came after her, like me, and in honor of the ancestors who came before her.

When she would knit me beanies, scarves, and gloves, not wanting me to freeze in the Northern California cold, I recognized that she felt at her best when using her hands. I remember her contentment, sitting in a rocking chair, humming Amazing Grace, while knitting or crocheting something for her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who are scattered across the world in countries much bigger and colder than Jamaica. She would send us things that instantly felt like home. Even after traveling through the mail, there was still a faint smell of Grandma's house in Spanish Town, Jamaica.

I'd like to think that in sharing this story about the lace-bark tree, we honor my grandma's memory and the memory of all of the Jamaican women whose creativity and resourcefulness may have been forgotten.

It's time for the wind down. I invite you to take a deep breath and stretch your body, release tension in your shoulders, jaw, neck, taking a moment to reflect on a sacred tree that still lives in Jamaica. Our journey of finding a magical tree, from which crafting traditions were born, our journey of honoring the brilliance of Jamaican women and those who follow in their footsteps. We rediscovered many things, so let's just sit in that feeling for a bit. I invite you to take a deep breath and thank yourself for listening to something new today. I invite you to take a deep breath and imagine being on a mountain in Cockpit Country, surrounded by hundreds of lace-bark tree saplings thriving. No mining or heavy machinery in sight, with faint notes of salt in the air from the Caribbean Sea. Just take it all in.

Thank you for spending time in Jamaica with me. Thank you for caring about my grandma. Thank you for listening, learning, and experiencing the material geographies that we are all made of.

You can subscribe to Black Material Geographies anywhere you get your podcasts. Black Material Geographies is part of the Whetstone Radio Collective. This podcast is a team effort. Thank you to the Black Material Geography's team, my producer, Tiffani Rozier, Audio Editor, Ray Royal, Composer, Philip Colletchi Nnamdi Iro , Researcher, Haven Ogbaselase, and Intern, Kai Stone.

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