I first came across these timeless Voodoo Blue baskets at the UKAware show last April, where I had a nice chat with Azim Hasham there and couldn’t resist buying a couple. I saw them again at the Eco Design Fair in June as well. 

The baskets are made by a women’s cooperative in Kenya. Most of the baskets are made of sisal, which is a great eco product as it is plant-based (from the agave sisalana plant), rapidly renewable and easily manufactured. (They also offer baskets of sustainable banana leaf, too.)

There are lots of fun colours available. The ‘natural’ coloured baskets are, duh, the natural sisal colour. But this means they use no additional dyes, so that’s a plus on the sustainability scale, and, although light, it’s a nice, warm natural colour. The ‘grey’ baskets use charcoal for colouring – also highly sustainable. The ‘sand’ coloured baskets use…wait for it…sand! Ok, I confess I don’t get how they transfer colour from sand, but that’s what he claimed. The other colours use more conventional dyes and, unfortunately, one has to assume they are as bad for the environment as most other conventional dyes.

As for transportation miles, well, the final product comes from Kenya, so not so great. I’m not sure where their raw materials come from, but there’s quite possibly more transportation miles involved there as well.

They get some tentative ethical points for “operating a fair trade policy,” although they don’t seem to be certified, which would provide outside validation of their claim, so it must be taken with a grain of salt. In speaking with Mr. Hasham, though, I don’t have much reason to doubt the claim. He told the story of how hard it was to manage inventory because they never knew when they would receive the finished baskets. The women would take the materials back to their villages to do the weaving and only return with the finished product when they needed some money.

There is little on their website about the company. I found this on the internet (as part of an event description at the Enterprise Centre for the Creative Arts): 

“…Voodoo Blue, a social enterprise producing sisal bags and accessories. The company has been using sisal to rejuvenate the basket weaving tradition of the Akamba women in Kenya since 1995. All products are of exceptional quality and pure design, and are fairly traded with women themselves establishing the buying price.  Azim has forged deals for the products to be sold in Liberty, Heals, Margaret Howell, DKNY and Conran Worldwide amongst others.”

They now have an online store as well as a showroom in Kew (gotta check that out!) and seem to have lots of online outlets for their goods.

Photo by Cheryl Kempton.