WAPI : Orange Colour Block Lidded Laundry Basket
Description
Bring a splash of colour and style to laundry day with a vibrant WAPI laundry basket, hand woven from doum palm leaf. This collection comes in three sizes, sporting a broad band of turmeric orange against white.
These sturdy and beautiful laundry baskets have travelled across the shores of the Jade Sea and the deserts of North Western Kenya - along a transparent and ethical supply chain - to your home. To purchase a WAPI basket is to support the livelihoods of the Turkana people, supporting the growth of their developing economy.
Turkana is Kenya’s largest county and known for making up part of the famous ‘Cradle of Mankind’, where some of the earliest evidence of human evolution has been found. This is also a part of Africa infamous for severe drought, which the Turkana have suffered from since the eighties.
In 1992, a Catholic charity initiated a basketry project in Turkana, to help start to integrate this marginalized corner of Kenya with the wider Kenyan economy. Today, 300 women from six local villages weave baskets here as a means of income, mostly taught the craft by their own mothers and grandmothers.
Material: DOUM PALM LEAF
Dimensions:
S: DIA: 40-44cm | H: 40-44cm
M: DIA: 45-49cm | H: 45-49cm
L: DIA: 50-55cm | H: 50-55cm
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.
