MANDAZI: Large Green, Brown and Orange Sisal Basket
Description
Like what you see? Snap up MANDAZI now, because there’s only one of them! The MANDAZI is truly one-of-a-kind: a green, brown and orange storage basket that’s perfect for tidying, organizing and bringing a welcome splash of Kenyan colour to all corners of the home.
The MANDAZI was hand-woven and hand-dyed in rural Kenya from hand-stripped, hand-rolled sisal grass. Its maker? An extremely talented craftswoman working within a weaving cooperative in Kenya’s rural Coastal Region. This most artistic group produce unique woven baskets to their own personal designs, choosing the patterns and dyes that best showcase their talents. Sisal grass is hand stripped using wooden tools and bare feet, and then it is hand rolled on the thighs before being hand dyed in vats of boiling water.
Basket weaving is a dynamic, income-generating craft form, and one that you support directly when you choose one of our woven storage baskets to take home. With crops suffering in the dry season – and these droughts lengthening – basket weaving enables women to make up the shortfall, and more. Working as part of a cooperative, these craftswomen are paid a wage and empowered to support themselves and their families with more security, raising funds to pay for school fees and buy food with.
This unique woven basket can be used all over the home for tidying, storing and organising. Pop MANDAZI in the kitchen for storing fruit or veg, use it in the bathroom for storing loo rolls or toiletries, or fill it with toys, blankets and books in the playroom. The possibilities are endless, but for more basket inspiration, see our uses page HERE. Meet the weavers HERE.
Material: SISAL
Dimensions: 30cm DIA x 29cm H
Click here for our basket SIZE GUIDE
Please note, as this is a handmade product, dimensions & colour may vary from those shown in the photographs.
HANDMADE IN KENYA
Product Info
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.
Meet The Artisans
Who Made Your Basket?
