GEUKA: Pink Bread Basket
Description
Give your dining table a stylish update with this GEUKA woven bread basket, hand made in Kenya from hand-stripped, hand-rolled, hand-dyed sisal grass. Sporting a pink stripe against a natural undyed base, this ethical woven basket will bring a pop of Kenyan colour to mealtimes, whether you use yours for bread rolls, fruit or even your beloved avocadoes
GEUKA was created by a talented craftswoman working within a weaving cooperative in Kenya’s rural Coastal Region. This collective produces unique woven baskets to their own individual designs, choosing their preferred patterns and colourways – so each woven bread basket is unique. Sisal grass is hand stripped using wooden tools and bare feet, and then it is hand rolled on the thighs before being dyed in vats of boiling water.
Basket weaving brings a vital second income to the weavers who are primarily women from farming families. With crops and livestock suffering in the dry season, basket weaving enables these women to make up the shortfall, and more. These craftswomen are paid a wage for each basket they produce, and empowered to support themselves and their families with extra money to pay for school fees and buy food with.
Each basket comes with a thank you card from the cooperative that made yours - meet the weavers HERE.
Material: SISAL
Dimensions: 20cm dia x 8cm h approx
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.
