Makenke basket LARGE

Very large decorative baskets with light and flexible material. Natural colours.

Hand made in the heart of the central american jungle, in a tiny village away from the world, these baskets have an extraordinary flexibility. They are very light and can decorate both the indoors and outdoors of your home, as they are waterproof.

Use them as lamp shades to enhance the nobility of this incredible material.
Approximate size.

These extraordinary baskets are made by the women of a very small tribe, the Woonaan, who live in the heart of the Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama.
These baskets are used in the home to store food (fruit, vegetables, roots, etc.) and utensils, and also outdoors to carry chickens, crabs, etc. The fibre used is water-resistant.
The people I work with have a very special way of working this fibre to make it very supple without losing its strength.
I started making these baskets in different sizes about 7 years ago, but we had to abandon the project because this once extremely common material (it's a common bush) is now disappearing due to deforestation.
We had to travel further and further by canoe to harvest this bush and we had to abandon the project because of the cost; and it would take years to cultivate these plants before they reached a reasonable size.
The Darien, which is the largest nature reserve in Central America, has unfortunately not escaped the tragedy of deforestation, the causes of which are both drought and the arrival of settlers to exploit virgin land.