TOFAA: Small Black, Purple and Orange Wool Basket
A gorgeous storage basket with black, purple and orange, TOFAA is hand woven by a member of the Kamba tribe in Kenya using local sisal and yarns from second hand woolly jumpers. Each one of our Nifty Knit baskets is unique, so there’s only one TOFAA in the world. Use yours as a woven planter for your houseplants, or use for storing toys or toiletries, jewellery, craft materials, keys, wallets and watches. These beautiful baskets will help you declutter and organise any corner of the whole whilst bringing a splash Kenyan style.
Originally woven by mothers as wedding gifts to their daughters, these African baskets – also known as kiondos - take extraordinary skill to produce, and up to six days to complete. Traditional kiondo weaving is seeing a revival thanks to a surge in demand from the interiors industry, and skilled elders continue to pass on this sustainable craft to their daughters and granddaughters
To own one of our unique wool bags is to become a part of our journey: a carefully woven tale of sustainability and craftsmanship. We are proud to support the weavers in this ethical trade, providing an additional source of income for farming families during the dry seasons. Each woven basket comes with a thank you card from the weaving cooperative that made it, and you can meet the weavers HERE.
Material: SISAL & RECYCLED WOOL (NATURAL & SYNTHETIC)
Dimensions: 30cm Dia x 28cm Height
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.
