Traditional Zulu Baskets

South Africa is famous for its tightly woven Zulu baskets and you can feel the mystery and essence of Africa in each handmade basket. Functional, beautiful, unique in size, shape and pattern, the baskets are made from indigenous raw materials. The fronds of the Ilala Palm (Hyphaene Coriacea) are used to weave the fine baskets and dyes of vegetable origin such as roots, berries, bark and leaves are used to color the palm.

Following into the footsteps of their mothers and grandmothers, girls learn to weave at early age. Passing down the craft has not only preserved it to this day but made the weaving of baskets a source of income to families living in the hills of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

The variety of traditional Zulu baskets goes from open bowls to bulb shaped watertight Zulu Beer baskets, bottle shaped watertight baskets, herb baskets or canister baskets. Each is unique and will add real African flavor to your home decor or table setting.

African Soapstone Carvings

Soapstone is a metamorphic stone (also known as soaprock or Kisii stone) similar to talc. It has been a medium for carving for thousands of years. Kenya soapstone is found in the Gusii highlands in the western part of the country, near Lake Victoria and the town of Tabaka is the heart of soapstone crafts.

Mind by hand from surface mines, large stones are pulled by a team of workers and cleaved into smaller pieces for carving. The stone is then delivered to carvers who carve sculptures from the natural stone. The stone color ranges from cream, to pink, to brown, to yellow, to black, to a marbling of all of them. The carvers used to make mostly wild animal figurines, but have started creating contemporary abstracts, candle holders, bookends, domestic figurines like cats and dogs to name a few for export. The entire process is done with simple hand tools and no machinery is ever used.

Once carved, the craftspeople smooth rough edges with sandpaper dipped in water and polish the piece to a high gloss or paint African motifs in brilliant colors with etched designs that showcase modern African creativity.

Click here for World Travel Art Soapstone Carvings

Fair Trade Purses - Our Winners!

Women love to accessorize! Purses are the No. 1 item we sell on crafts markets. We like to share with you our favorite Fair Trade, Eco-Friendly purses. They are fashionable, colorful, functional and make excellent conversation pieces.

Tatami-Style Seagrass Purses (Baskets of Cambodia).
These colorful, functional purses are made from natural seagrass that grows as high as 8' tall. All have a light colored interior with zippers and compartments. They come in various shapes, many colors and features that suit any preference.

Pop Top Purses (Mexico).
Made from 864 pieces of pop tops, this purse shows how the principles of "reduce, reuse and recycle" can be applied to make a fashionable and functional piece of accessory.

Recycled Tire Purses (India).
What a message these fashionable, "upcycled" purses carry! Rather than throwing it on the landfill, tires and inner tubes are recycled and transformed into gorgeous looking purses that are the talk of the town.

Check out our entire selection of Fair Trade Purses and Bags at www.worldtravelart.com

Conserve - Fashionable Upcycled Bags

Born of a desire to reduce India's mountain of waste and to help some of Delhi's poorest living in the City's slums, Conserve India was founded as an NGO by Anita and Shalabh Ahuja.

Conserve started as a recycling project and was quickly confronted with the fact that especially thousands of plastic bags could not be composted or recycled locally. The founders combined expertise in engineering and creative talent lead to the solution. Conserve started "upcycling" the bags by washing, drying, and pressing them into sheets of plastic that could be reinvented as fashion accessories. The principle of handmade recycled plastic (HRP) was born.

Other examples of materials used by Conserve to reduce, reuse, upcycle and add value to waste, create income and jobs are:

Rubber tube.

The inner tubes of old truck tyres are soft and durable and a great alternative to leather. Once the inner tube is washed, it is cut into shape or patterns in a way that allows total flexibility in designing fashionable, functional and fun bags.

Seat belts.
Rolls of un-used seat belt material from manufacturers that would go to the landfill are used and woven together into fabulous bags.

Today, Conserve India employs and trains hundreds of people from Dehli's most disadvantaged communities. The generated income from selling the products is spent on social welfare projects and education in those same communities.

The products are a great fit with current eco-chic trends in the United States and Europe. They are functional, dramatic and make excellent conversation pieces.

Calypso Chile

Founded in 1994, Calypso Chile is a family crafts workshop based in the neighborhood of La Reina, Santiago de Chile. Through perseverance, the family successfully built a sustainable business that supports not only this family, but as well the families of others. Calypso Chile creates, produces, sells and exports their fused glass pieces national and international to several countries worldwide.

As a member of the WFTO (World Fair Trade Organization), Calypso is operated under the principles of Fair Trade, ensuring that all of the artisans and crafts people are paid a fair price for their work.

Fused glass is a term used to describe glass that has been fired (heat-processed) in a "kiln" at a range of high temperatures.

The process of fused glass requires sheets of glass to first be cut into the desired shape. Next, the glass design is put into the kiln. As the kiln heats up, the glass contracts, expands, and adheres together. When the piece is melted to the artist's satisfaction, the kiln temperature is slowly lowered to allow the glass to cool down and avoid cracking.

Thera are three main distinctions for temperature application and the resulting effect on the glass. Firing the glass at the highest temperatures is a "full fues". The techniques can be applied to one glass work in separate firings to add depth, relief and shape.

All kinds of items can be made with fused glass. Wall hangings and jewelry are some of today's most popular pieces.

Women in Business Development (WIBDI), Samoa

Talofa from Samoa.

Women in Business Development, Inc (WIBDI) was founded in 1991 as a small non-profit organization with focus on providing opportunities for families living in rural areas of Western Samoa. They do encourage the families to earn a living with the resources available to them, provide training, supervision and support plus give access to microfinance.

The strong family culture in Samoa shaped the way WIBDI is working. It focuses on individual families and not on individuals or villages. An extended family in Samoa can be a large community with members up to a hundred individuals. The head of the family is the point person and works directly with WIBDI. Over the years the organization found, that a family that can earn money for itself seems to be more committed to sustainable, long-term projects and willing to re-invest money into it.

Projects through this energetic group of women include traditional crafts like Siapo making, jewelry made from coconut and seashell, carving coconut bowls and fine mat weaving. A lot of the produced crafts are sold on the Samoan Islands and a smaller amount is send to overseas markets and retailers like World Travel Art.

WIBD started a bi-monthly organic market day in order to help rural organic farmers. All products offered on the market are certified by the "National Association for Sustainable Agriculture in Australia". Fresh fruit and vegetable, spices, cocoa, honey, pure cold pressed coconut oil and more are offered. Over time the markets became so popular that by now they seem to be part of Samoan way of life.

Women in Business Development clearly has become the link between small Samoan producers and the wider global market. They found ways to overcome obstacles like the remote island location, natural disasters and limited quantities that can be produced. The approach of focusing on individual families has proved to be successful and the strong, flexible mindset of the women in the organization will guarantee the success to go on.

Artesanas Campesinas (ARTCAMP)

ARTCAMP is a rural women's artisans cooperative in Tecalpulco, Municipality of Taxco in Mexico.

Located between the hills of Acapulco and about 100 miles southwest of Mexico City, Taxco, in the State of Guerrero, is one of the oldest silver mining sites in the Americas. It has retained its natural charm and colonial ambiance with red-tiled roofs and cobble stoned narrow streets. Silver Jewelry making goes back generations and the final pieces were always considered exquisitly beautiful in craftsmanship.

ARTCAMP was created in 1991 after the local handcrafted jewelry industry almost collapsed due to broad changes in fashion and fierce competition from Asia. Before the collapse, many families were employed and buyers came from all over to purchase the handcrafted jewelry of Tecalpulco. Suddenly the pieces were no longer considered valuable and price cuts were forced upon the humble producers of Mexican artisans.

Especially in rural areas like Tecalpulco now a day it is common that single women support their families without the support of husbands or fathers as men leave the villages in search for work in other areas of Mexico or the United States.

When a small foreign-owned factory went bankrupt the women who worked there determined to try and continue to employ themselves joined together and formed what was eventually constituted legally as Artcamp SC de RL. In response to a desperate situation, the women persevered, drew strength from a centuries-long cultural experience, they generated new timely designs and production forms and ultimately found markets for their products.

The years of the early 1990s were difficult and they lived from job to job and from hope to hope but never stopped to improve themselves.

Over the past years the women of ARTCAMP became well organized, efficient and go about business in a professional way. They found new markets and work through and with the "Artisan-Owned-Direct-Distribution-Model" that allows the Coop to sell their fashion Stone Mosaic Jewelry directly to retailers in the markets of the US.

ARTCAMP has not been a beneficiary of grants or charity and by standard the women of the coop are poor BUT contributed in many ways to the community in form of expansions of the local hospital, language learning and indigenous literature projects, water projects and more. By organizing more projects, without concerning oneself with the fact that one has no or little money, the projects and the desired goals take giant steps into becoming reality.