FROM EARTH TO ART: THE JOURNEY OF OUR HANDWOVEN SISAL BASKET
In a world of mass-produced plastic, there is something deeply grounding about a product that starts its life in the soil. Our sisal baskets aren’t just storage and luggage carriers; they are a labour of love, tradition, and incredible skill.
Have you ever wondered how a rugged plant leaf becomes a beautiful, durable basket? Let me take you behind the scenes of our beautiful weaving process.
1. Harvesting the Raw Sisal
It all begins with the Agave Sisalana plant. Mweni bends into the sisal patch just after dawn, selects, and carefully harvests the thick, young, mature, and fleshy inner leaves, whose mature leaves are preferred for commercial-grade industrial fibre. ‘These hold better,’ she says. She then wraps the harvested sisal leaves with sisal ropes or twine to make them easier to transport from the field to where the women actually do the weaving.
2. Extracting the Strength
To get to the heart of the basket, Mweni, with her group, strips the leaves to reveal the long, white fibres inside. These fibres are then washed, re-washed and sun-dried until they are firm and light, creating the incredibly strong foundation sisal is famous for. The artisans ensure that the sisal fibres are exposed to direct sunlight and kept free of contact with other objects or materials to avoid discolouration. When the fibres meet the firm texture they want, it’s then withdrawn from the sunlight.
3. Adding Colour & Character
Before the weaving begins, the fibres are hand-dyed, then rolled by hand into fine, consistent twine—a skill that takes years to master, but the Kwa-Group one women are far ahead in some upper hand for knowing and engaging with the skill in their daily lives.
In a world of mass-produced plastic, there is something deeply grounding about a product that starts its life in the soil. Our sisal baskets aren’t just storage and luggage carriers; they are a labour of love, tradition, and incredible skill.
Have you ever wondered how a rugged plant leaf becomes a beautiful, durable basket? Let me take you behind the scenes of our beautiful weaving process.
1. Harvesting the Raw Sisal
It all begins with the Agave Sisalana plant. Mweni bends into the sisal patch just after dawn, selects, and carefully harvests the thick, young, mature, and fleshy inner leaves, whose mature leaves are preferred for commercial-grade industrial fibre. ‘These hold better,’ she says. She then wraps the harvested sisal leaves with sisal ropes or twine to make them easier to transport from the field to where the women actually do the weaving.
2. Extracting the Strength
To get to the heart of the basket, Mweni, with her group, strips the leaves to reveal the long, white fibres inside. These fibres are then washed, re-washed and sun-dried until they are firm and light, creating the incredibly strong foundation sisal is famous for. The artisans ensure that the sisal fibres are exposed to direct sunlight and kept free of contact with other objects or materials to avoid discolouration. When the fibres meet the firm texture they want, it’s then withdrawn from the sunlight.
3. Adding Colour & Character
Before the weaving begins, the fibres are hand-dyed, then rolled by hand into fine, consistent twine—a skill that takes years to master, but the Kwa-Group one women are far ahead in some upper hand for knowing and engaging with the skill in their daily lives.
Anne and her coordinated group use vibrant natural colours like mid-brown to create the unique patterns you see in our baskets. The colours, like brown, are first sourced from the environment. Anne’s team obtained the colour brown, for instance, from the given tree barks and some roots. They carry the coloured barks and roots to a member’s residential place, which is mostly the chairlady’s place, and dry them a bit before intense boiling.
They then deepened all the sisal twines they had made for dyed bags in the boiling-coloured water to obtain a uniform colour and continued to boil at an extreme temperature for the dye/colour to pick and stick. Normally, they use very huge sufurias and continue boiling until the colour is achieved. The twins are then carefully removed and dried again ready to be used in basket making.
4. The Art of the Weave
Finally, the magic happens in Ukambani-Kwa-Group one, which is located within Kitui County. The Kwa-Group one women use the traditional techniques passed down through generations, our weavers transform these simple strands into the intricate, sturdy baskets you love. Each one can take anywhere from a few days to two weeks to complete, depending on the basket’s size, details, and the weaver’s speed. At this point, we as the team are working hand in hand with the artisans from Kwa-Group, one women's weaving group, to produce sisal products that you might not have seen in the market before, but it will definitely take you just a few days to like the product.
Our team can agree that this journey has taken some time now, lots of production activities and brand developments happening behind the scenes in both Nairobi and Ukambana. In simpler terms, the ears, eyes and minds of our l esteemed potential customers are filled with curiosity. They are not just waiting for a product at the end, but the unfolding series of processes, identity and ideas of bringing PAM YO! Sisal totes to life.
We have a variety of bags, from totes and luggage bags to home bags, for your household needs, like keeping your children’s toys, carrying your shopping, storing your fruits, and even shopping for your vegetables. When you bring one of our sisal baskets into your home, you are not just getting a "product." You are supporting a community of artisans and preserving an ancient craft. Let’s sustain the community together. Let’s embrace craft forever.
Anne and her coordinated group use vibrant natural colours like mid-brown to create the unique patterns you see in our baskets. The colours, like brown, are first sourced from the environment. Anne’s team obtained the colour brown, for instance, from the given tree barks and some roots. They carry the coloured barks and roots to a member’s residential place, which is mostly the chairlady’s place, and dry them a bit before intense boiling.
They then deepened all the sisal twines they had made for dyed bags in the boiling-coloured water to obtain a uniform colour and continued to boil at an extreme temperature for the dye/colour to pick and stick. Normally, they use very huge sufurias and continue boiling until the colour is achieved. The twins are then carefully removed and dried again ready to be used in basket making.