ETHIOPIAN INSPIRED CRAFT-ORIENTED PRODUCT DESIGN

Creative Conscience Award Winner, Melissa Acker, explains the inspiration behind her craft-oriented product design project following a trip to Ethiopia

From Melissa: 

"My project promotes a “living” preservation of traditional crafts, encouraging artisans to improve their competitiveness by combining the tradition of craftsmanship with the innovation of design (craft-oriented design).

During a visit to Ethiopia (where I had been co-organising and taking part in a trans-disciplinary cooperative workshop with a local community), I visited the Mercato – the biggest open-air market in the African continent – and was truly impressed by the skills of traditional basket makers.

Basketry, one of the earliest forms of handicrafts, has not undergone mechanisation yet. There are still many techniques existing worldwide today, each one correlating with the climate zones and vegetation of each region. Ethiopia is renowned for the finely coiled grass baskets from the Harari region, where these play a huge role in local culture.

Sadly though, there has been a significant decrease in basket makers worldwide, and slowly the valuable knowledge and cultural heritage is being lost. This can be seen with Harari basketry in Ethiopia: through my research, I discovered that the art of dyeing and weaving naturally coloured Harari patterns has already been lost and replaced with inferior artificial colours. On this basis, I decided to put the focus of the basket designs on the high quality of coiling and the most distinctive, iconic shapes, completely removing the colours. I re-sized, re-proportioned and re-assembled archetypical design elements – the final collection is a reinterpretation of the most common receptacles of Ethiopian Harari baskets with the help of craft-oriented design.

In contrast to the loss of traditional crafts, the international demand for unique products with provenance is on the rise. Instead of large corporations imitating their work, artisans should be able to benefit from this situation. Ethiopia’s trade deficit and favourable export conditions could contribute by adapting the contemporary range of baskets to international demand.

As it was not possible for me to develop the whole project on location in Ethiopia (the models shown in the pictures are proportional models showing forms and dimensions of the coiling), the next step to make this project a reality, would be to enter into discussions with Harari basket makers with a view to developing a final collection with them (my collection is simply a case study rather than a range of final products). The aim would be to develop and prototype final objects together with the craftspeople and their expertise, ultimately with plans to distribute their work internationally. Hopefully, this would result in direct profit for the basket makers from the sales whilst supporting a "living" preservation of this beautiful cultural heritage."

Melissa won a silver award in the Product & Structural Design category in the CC Awards 2021 and graduated with a Diploma in Industrial Design at Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design. More information about Melissa’s projects can be found on her:
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