A 400-year tradition makes elephants' favorite grass into weaving craft.
Introducing the hand-woven elephant grass fans from Ghana's City of Rocks, West Africa.

非洲版新加坡──盧安達

The Global Decor, the African Waves

These colorful,  hand-woven fans with natural grass aroma come from Ghana of West Africa, They are called the Bolga fans. Bolga weaving is often seen in home decor in Europe and North America. Their strong colors and neat designs make them frequently seen in Vogue, Voyage LA and other fashion magazines. The Bolga weaving is becoming more and more sophisticated and unique. The items are popular and regard as stylish globally, and even become fashionable boutique.

盧安達的傳統工藝

Bolga weaving is not only refined and accepted by European and American societies, its uniqueness also represents African culture. Many movies present Africa with Bolga weaving in the scenes. For example, the eye-catching Bolga baskets were seen in a street scene of the fictional country Waganda, in Marvel's Black Panther.

Elephants' Favorite

Bolga fans are made with the local plant, elephantgrass, which originates in Africa. It gets the name because it is elephants' favorite. The commonly seen grass is strong in reproduction and adaptation. It grows in extremely dry wasteland and in humid swamps, and can even thrive into a jungle up to four meters  high. Although a native African, it has spread to all over the world through human movements in the past one or two hundred years. It even appears in riverbanks and mountains in Taiwan, where it is regarded as a famous exotic species.

在傷痛後走向和平的籃子，一起編織往前走

Bolga weaving is developed by the Frafra people. Their tribe is characterized by traditional round huts, strongly-built with mixture of clay, soil, straw and dried cow manure. They paint their walls with red, white and black geometric patterns. The patterns are related to the traditional mask culture, tribal tales or daily objects.

The name of Boltanga comes from the Frafra language. Bolga means rock and tanga (tẽŋa) means the city. Literally, the City of Rocks is barren and people have to find other livings than farming. In the very beginning, Bolga weaving is used in making sieves for sorghum or pito beer brewing. Later the Bolga baskets were made into containers for objects and fruit. More and more other objects were woven and taken into the market in exchange for salt and Kola nuts. The weaving was thus gradually developed.