PILI: Grey and Natural Colour Block Woven Laundry Basket
Description
Beautiful and ethically hand-woven, the PILI laundry basket sports a chic grey band against a biscuit-coloured base. This laundry hamper is dyed using natural materials: soot and charcoal.
Woven by one of the most experienced members of the women’s weaving cooperatives in the rural Eastern Region of Kenya, this versatile laundry hamper is made from local sisal fibres. Its stiff leaves are harvested, rolled and dyed by hand before six days of weaving begins. Each laundry basket takes forty balls of sisal to complete, whilst two expert leather workers (known locally as ‘fundi’) produce the soft leather trim and handles.
Deep and strong enough for storing logs by the fireplace yet equally soft and supple enough for bathroom or nursery storage, this versatile laundry basket can be put to use all over the home as your needs change.
Buying one of our woven laundry baskets will help families make a sustainable living. By owning any of our woven baskets you become part of this narrative, directly supporting the weavers in becoming less dependent on the unpredictable nature of self-sufficiency farming. You can meet the weavers HERE.
Material: SISAL & LEATHER
Dimensions:
LARGE: 40cm DIA x 40cm H
Leather used is a by-product of the food industry.
Please note, as this is a handmade product, dimensions & colour may vary from those shown in the photographs.
FAIR TRADE & 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.
