1 OUR UGANDAN COMMUNITY
The Rubona Weavers
Our first designs started in the beautiful Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda with the Rubona Weavers Cohort. The Rubona Weavers cohort is a network now of 12 villages of women that create fine and intricate coil-stitch basket disks and flowers from their experimental garden to dye the disks beautiful shades of blue, green, yellow, orange, and reds.
The weaver’s cohort has existed for centuries with this know-how passed on generationally to women trained from a young age in this craftsmanship.
Far away from the capital of Kampala, in the rural landscape of the Rwenzori Mountains, Eilaf Osman wanted to showcase their fine craftsmanship to the world in her Medani and Rwenzori Bag lines.
1 COIL STITCH BASKET DISKS
A completed basket art disk, made out of natural plant fibers, such as raffia and bukedo (banana leaf stalk).
CENTURY-OLD PRACTICES
2 The basket weavers collect plant fibers that are native to the Rwenzori Mountains to make sustainable materials for the basket art. They begin by collecting banana stalks and stripping them of their leaves before cutting the leaves into smaller strips for the weaving process. They begin by smashing black stalks sourced from a lake-side quarry near the mountains for mordanting.
3 They use marigolds, indigo, cosmos & madder flowers to create a vibrant dye to dye the raffia used for weaving. Each weaver spends about three days to create one basket art disk that is used for our handbags. Since each disk is handwoven, there might be slight variations in the design but all of them carry the same amount of love and craftsmanship.
4 Flower Dyeing
The Rubona Weavers use traditional and organic practices to produce high-quality and colourful basket art disks.
