#Ostrich picture artclip series

Baskets are made from different grasses, barks or reeds depending on what is available in the region. One of the enduring aspects of basket-making is the materials used. Alexander von Rudloff, Botswanacraft Marketing 2010.

As the art form evolves, more and more unique and collectable baskets are being created.’īotswana Baskets A Living Art, Ed. Knowledgeable basket collectors are aware of this and regard some Botswana baskets as a serious investment to rival artworks from around the world. ‘As basketry evolves in Botswana, some unique one-of-a-kind designs are being created by true artists, merging the craft of basketry with the world of abstract art. Botswanacraft, based in the capital Gaborone, is an example of an enterprise set up to develop and market crafts as artisanal products. Today, these designs make baskets desirable as decorative items. The striking designs are inspired by local myths as well as by Botswana’s wildlife, and are named accordingly, as Scobie Lekhutile explains: We do not know Willoughby’s motivation for collecting, but l ike other colonial-era collectors, his collection reflects a particular place and time, and there were many kinds of object that were not available to him or that he chose not to collect. Collectors, and museums, at this time preferred to present objects as ‘typical’ of a single culture. In Willoughby’s time there was less understanding about the diversity of cultures, and cross-cultural influences, within African countries. The most famous baskets come from the north and north west of the country, but the designs are widely recognised across Botswana. These may not be represented in Willoughby’s collection because he was stationed in the central district of Botswana. While most of the baskets that Willoughby collected are plain and practical, other baskets made in Botswana are known for their distinctive designs. Although basket-making has diversified into an art form, there are still practical uses for baskets today, as maker Nchadinyana Teseletso explained to Khama III Memorial Museum curator Scobie Lekhutile. This is reflected in the items Willoughby collected, which included storage baskets. The original use for baskets was as practical domestic utensils. In contrast, more decorative baskets were woven by women, a trend that continues today as basket-making can provide women with an independent income. The objects collected by Willoughby include a plain winnowing basket (used to remove the chaff from the grain) which would have been woven by a Tswana man as a way to pass time while away from home at the Moraka (cattle post). From left: R4007/14 Winnowing basket, c 1890 E3/1/70 basket, date unknown WAENT000146/1 Totwana basket made in Maun, Northern Botswana, purchased from Khama III Memorial Museum shop, 2019 The craft has developed over time from a practical domestic one to an artisanal culture where intricate baskets are created for display in the home, for sale to tourists and for exhibition in galleries. Like many of the crafts featured in the Making Botswana series, basket-making has a long tradition in Botswana. Each blog will explore connections between the objects in RPMT’s collection and the history and contemporary culture of Botswana. You can read more about the significance of the collections in the first blog in the series. Many of these were collected by Reverend William Charles Willoughby, a missionary who lived and worked in what was then Bechuanaland in the 1890s.

#Ostrich picture artclip series

This series of posts is inspired by objects from Botswana in RPMT’s collections which have been researched as part of the Making African Connections project.