KODI: Lavender & Yellow Duo Colour Block Woven Basket
Say hello to the KODI duo colour block baskets, designed exclusively by The Basket Room for SS23 and featuring equal parts soft yellow and lavender. These beautiful, ethically-produced baskets come in three sizes, and can be used all over the home: on your desk, on bedside tables and shelves, in the bathroom, and even in the kitchen or on the dining room table, filled with fruit, dried flowers or bread. These baskets will live many different lives in your home over the years, moulding to your storage needs as they evolve. They also make beautiful woven planters, and inspired new home gifts.
Crafting within a weaving group empowers rural women to support themselves and their families with a reliable second income in the dry seasons, where farming alone becomes untenable. Weaving work takes place in quiet moments between childcare and domestic work, church and socialising. In fact, weaving is a social activity in itself, and women regularly meet to weave together, supporting and encouraging one another as they chat and work, and watch one another’s children.
We have partnered with this rural Kenyan weaving group for several years now and we spend time with these women in person as often as we can. It is vital to us to constantly strengthen the connection between maker and buyer, sharing their stories and flying the flag for handmade crafts.
These women are brilliant with colour, producing sisal in an array of shades through laborious hand dyeing, and their careful weaving work is equally impressive. All of these women have woven baskets from a young age – having been taught this traditional African craft by female elders in their families and communities. What was once a traditional pastime is now an income stream for these hardworking women, and your purchases enable us to keep this precious craft alive.
Material: SISAL & BRANDED LEATHER TAB
Dimensions (approx):
If you need a specific size please let us know prior to placing your order.
Please note, as this is a handmade product, dimensions & colour may vary from those shown in the photographs.
HANDMADE IN KENYA
Our journey into sustainable style began in Kenya, and the lion’s share of our woven baskets are Kenyan-made. Whilst every region of Kenya boasts its own rich natural bounty, each cooperative we partner with offers expertise in its own unique form of basketry. Weaving, dyeing and grass-rolling techniques differ across the regions as much as basket shapes, patterns and structures. These precious crafts are woven through the generations within families - passed along continuous thread from mother to daughter - protecting and preserving an art form as old as man.
Vast and colourful, vibrant and bursting with natural beauty and style, our fair trade baskets are as eclectic as their homeland and its people. From sisal grass to doum palm, banana leaf fibres to palm leaf, each weaving cooperative works with what is locally available and only what can be sustainably sourced, to produce beautiful baskets which are 100% Kenyan made, and ethically produced. All cow hide bag tags, straps, and basket labels are made from leather sourced as a by-product of the food industry. Natural dyes come from pounded roots, bark and vegetables of the region, whilst all synthetic dyes are sustainably sourced.
From the Kamba tribe to the camel-herding Ariaal pastoralists of Northern Kenya, you can read more about the lives of the Kenyan weavers we work with - and the wonderful baskets they produce - below.
