MANGA: Small Turquoise Sisal Basket
The Manga is a true one-off: woven with colour, stories and craft. This turquoise woven basket was produced by a highly talented weaver working within a women’s cooperative in Kenya’s rural Coastal Region, to her own unique design.
These beautiful woven baskets are ideal for use on your nightstand or dressing table, for keeping all your jewellery and trinkets in one place. Pop yours on your desk to bring a splash of colour and style to the workspace, or use your Manga woven basket as a planter or flower pot for homing your house plants and succulents. For more basket inspiration, see our uses page HERE.
The scrupulous art of basket weaving is passed along the female line in rural Kenya, and this extremely creative group of weavers work to their own original patterns and colourways, selecting their own dyes and enjoying full artistic license in their work. Sisal grass is hand-stripped using wooden tools and the use of weavers’ feet, and then hand-rolled on the thighs before being hand-dyed in large vats of boiling water.
By becoming the proud owner of this beautiful basket you play your own part in empowering women to financially support themselves and their families through the dry seasons. Meet the weavers from this region HERE.
Material: SISAL
Dimensions: 17cm Dia x 17cm Height
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
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.
