Skip to content
Mogusii Cultural Heritage

Woven storage basket

egetonge

A tight-woven basket used for winnowing and storage, made from dyed fibres.

Woven storage basket
Kisii women on the road (historical photograph). — Wikimedia Commons — File:Three Kisii women walking.jpg · Public domain

A tight-woven basket used for winnowing and storage, made from dyed fibres. Part of the Mogusii Cultural Heritage documented collection.

Cultural context

Gusii women wove baskets from sisal, banana fibre, papyrus and forest reeds, dyeing strands with bark and later commercial dyes. Baskets moved maize from field to granary, carried goods to the great market days, and sifted flour from chaff at the threshing floor — the work visible in the archive photographs of women threshing and grinding grain in this collection.