These beautiful collecting baskets of the Khwe San people of northern Namibia, used for collecting wild fruits, nuts and edible tubers, are of a style that nearly went extinct in their ancestral settlement area. It was revived in the mid-90s during basket upgrading courses. The older women in the group still remembered the technique and could teach it to the younger ones.

The baskets are made from the leaves and hard leaf-spines of the local palm. Colours are obtained from the bark, roots, and leaves of endemic dye plants. Given the San women’s vast knowledge of their environment, it is not surprising that these baskets show a variety of colours not often seen in other baskets in the country.