The Craft of a Culture

Published on 12-09-2014

Is it a melon? Is it a pumpkin? No, it’s a calabash! It’s fun to say and you can make it into a stunning lampshade, but at the end of the day, what exactly is a calabash? Well, it’s a gourd, of course. That doesn’t help? It’s green, it grows on a vine and is also known as an opo squash or a long melon. So if a honeydew melon met a butternut pumpkin and they loved each other very very much, together they might create something like a calabash. It was one of the earliest cultivated plants in the world, grown not for eating but because its watertight qualities made it the perfect water container. Eminently more stylish than a Mount Franklin bottle, dried and hollowed out calabashes are still commonly used across Africa to make anything ranging from household utensils such as bowls, to musical shakers or Nzeze stringed instruments.

All of which goes to show that many African crafts may have been born of necessity but over time have become expressions of creativity in their own right. When you think about it, what’s the real difference between ‘art’ and ‘craft’? To take a simplistic view, craft has a practical functional purpose and art is for looking at. But it can be a fine line and with African art it’s a fine line indeed, as artworks can have a practical or cultural purpose and handcrafted artefacts such as wooden masks can be used in ceremonial dances or equally hung on the wall to admire. The organic curves of soapstone bowls and candle holders can be beautifully expressive at the same time as fulfilling an everyday function.

It’s not worth getting hung up on semantics, because Motherland Curios’ artisans, craftsmen and craftswomen take just as much pride in their work as our artists and sculptors. Most importantly, you’ll love looking at our crafts just as much as our beautiful ‘artworks’. Just because something could be put to practical use doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful too. Director, writer and scholar Owen 'Alik Shahadah goes so far as to suggest that “in Africa all art is socially functional”.

African crafts don’t always have to take themselves seriously either. Take our range of keyrings for instance, crafted from a range of materials including beads, wood, bone, leather and amber. You can choose something symbolic like a figurine, flag or animal, an abstract shape, a bit of fun like an African drum or the ultimate in frivolity; a miniature animal print flip flop.

Find out more about the Art of Africa and tell us your thoughts about the differences between African art and African craft.