WILAYA: Green Colour Block Woven Basket
These soothing sapling green and white colour block baskets are ethically produced in three handy sizes, woven from sustainably sourced sisal grass by artisan women in rural Kenya. Use your new woven storage basket for keeping jewellery, toiletries and stationery organized, or fill yours with fruit, dried flowers, children’s toys, remote controls, rugs, gloves and hats. These round sisal baskets make excellent desk tidies, toy baskets and woven planters for your houseplants – and inspired new home gifts. Whichever way you choose to use your new colour block basket it is sure to bring a dash of texture and pastel-hued joy to your home.
Basket weaving within a group empowers women to support their families with a flexible income in the dry seasons, where subsistence farming becomes unsustainable. We have worked with this weaving group for several years now and we visit them as often as we can, and the women in this particular group are simply brilliant at producing an array of gorgeous colours through meticulous hand dyeing. Basket weaving is in these women’s blood: all have woven from a young age and will continue to pass this precious legacy on to future generations thanks to your purchases.
Material: SISAL & BRANDED LEATHER TAB
Dimensions (approx):
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.