BLUU: Blue Check Fringed Basket Bag
A handwoven sisal tote bag in an on-trend checkerboard pattern, BLUU is the perfect handbag for relaxed days out. With twisted shoulder straps and no leather labelling, this one’s 100% vegan and totally plastic-free: a bag for the future. This basket bag stands out from the crowd with its beautiful sisal fringing and our new brass logo pin - just add purse, keys and sunglasses and you’re good to go!
These fringed bags are part of a limited production run, produced by a Kenyan weaving group we have partnered with since the very beginning of The Basket Room. These women have an exceptional eye for detail and have previously worked with us on large commissions from ethical brand LUSH, and a collaboration with Jigsaw in 2016. When they’re not working on special projects like this, they’re weaving our popular woven shoppers, sisal laundry baskets and banana fibre baskets.
BLUU is part of a very collection of designs we have produced in collaboration with British accessories designer Hannah Harrison. You can read all about this retro collaboration, inspired by the swinging 60s, here.
The logo tag is made from recycled brass, please be aware there may be some small marks - to keep yours looking shiny use water mixed with lemon juice or any standard brass cleaning product
Materials: SISAL & BRASS
Dimensions: 23cm H x 32cm W
Handle Drop - 13cm
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.
