ITALE: XL Grey Storage Basket
Description
Bring a little scandi style to the home with this beautiful soft grey and natural colour block basket, hand woven in South Western Kenya. ITALE looks stunning in a nursery or bedroom, filled with toys or clothes, or homing your favourite succulent or cacti plant as a stylish planter. Need more inspiration? Check out our basket uses page HERE.
These blocked colour baskets are hand made by a small Kenyan weaving cooperative of around forty members and a dye manager dedicated to maintaining colour quality and consistency. Baskets are all made from local sisal grass which is purchased ready-rolled when orders for these baskets come in from The Basket Room. This is then hand-dyed in large vats of boiling water and hung out to dry before a traditional twining method is used to create each basket. This weaving group is a highly accomplished collective of craftswomen who have practised this meticulous art from a young age, having been taught by mothers and grandmothers.
Our partnership with this small weaving cooperative empowers women to support their families with a flexible income in the dry seasons, where subsistence farming often fails to deliver everything the family needs to thrive. Buy one of our woven baskets and you actively support these weavers and their families. Each beautifully woven basket is supplied with a thank you card from the weaving cooperative, and you can meet these weavers right HERE.
Material: SISAL & BRANDED LEATHER TAB
Dimensions: 35-40cm Dia x 28-32cm H
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.
