Basket: Binga Grain Separating 15"Ø

Each basket has its own individual design, created and expertly hand woven (mostly) by grandmothers and their female wards to age old, time-honored methods, passed on from the matriarch to the younger females in her clan. Click here for a picture of one of the young women who weave these beautiful baskets. Natural fiber from dried ilala palm leaf (tree only generates from seed that has passed through an elephant?s digestive system) is cut, dried, and prepared for weaving in its natural straw/buff-color or dyed (by boiling roots, berries, leaves, and bark of indigenous flora). Bark and grass fibers are used in the basket making process.

The patterns used are often symbolic of local nature and traditional and modern rural life (guinea fowl patterns, lightning, fish, signs of love, wind in the grass, windmills, etc.). They take days of dedicated labor to produce. The typical attention to detail and high quality finish that the women painstakingly construct into their baskets can be seen in the pictures. Even the reverse side (or underside) is finished to the same high standard and the typical base detail can be seen if you click here.

No two baskets, however similar in style, even by the same artisan, are the same; each one is an original, unique work of art of museum quality. Being handcrafted from natural materials some minor imperfections may be anticipated that add rather than detract from the beauty of the basket. The actual basket you will receive (WYSIWYG) is pictured.