In Bolgatanga, weaving is part of everyday life, an ancestral tradition passed on within families and communities by watching, practising and working beside experienced weavers. As in much of basketry, most weavers are women, and the income their creations bring sits alongside farming and the daily work of looking after the home, the children and the community.
The warm welcome Bolga baskets have received in the international market has also allowed women to gain a strong sense of independence. Weaver cooperatives now help with access to finance, the bulk buying of materials and training.
“I enjoy being able to pay my children’s school fees,” weaver Abanbire Asampana shares.
In an interview, Evellyun Baba said weavers often learn at a young age. “I learnt in my village ever since I was a child,” Baba said.
Rose Agamikere also remembers: “The mothers and other friends were basket weavers, so they taught me.”
Mary Anaba grew up in Gambibigo, a Bolgatanga neighbourhood known for its baskets, in a family compound where several generations wove together: “It was my mum who first taught me,” she says, and master weaver John Akurigo taught her the weaving technique she is known for.
Her shapes come from the land. Anaba says her art baskets resemble the hills and valleys around where she lives, and counting turns that landscape into form: “Calculation is a very important part of my process when I am weaving.”
Her larger baskets take about three weeks. She says her materials are “Elephant grass, my hands and my mind.” The Tua Tia, one of her signature forms, takes its name from the baobab, which its makers at The Baba Tree Basket Company call the “mother tree”.
Her work has travelled far. In 2026, Mary Anaba and the Baba Tree masters, working with designer Álvaro Catalán de Ocón, were part of the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize, where their elephant grass Frafra Tapestry earned a special mention.
What could a piece like this offer to a living space? Perhaps a place for the eye to settle, a texture that warms stone or timber, a shape that echoes a hillside, and a story of whose hands made it.
Across our collections, we show the origins of objects with a strong sense of form, brought together through relationships with artisan groups. An existing form in a different colour combination creates a totally new appeal or a discussion about scale—material and technique guide what is possible, alongside the project’s needs.