Ewe fisherman Dzobo Rubben weaves the top section of a basketry fish trap made of bamboo and vine cordage, securing the trap with his feet as he works. He uses cordage to bundle bamboo sticks and narrow the trap toward its top. In lower rows, individual bamboo sticks are separated by two twists of rope. As the weaver nears the top, he reduces the twist between sticks to one, narrowing their spacing. In the next row he bundles two sticks separated by one twist. He then bundles four, then eight, creating a cone-shaped trap. Akanyakrom, 23 July, 2022.
Rights:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
Publisher:
University of Victoria Libraries
Location(s) Facet:
Akanyakrom (resettled);8.246709, -2.244840
Subjects:
Men's work
Subjects Facet:
Bamboo; Cordage; Fish traps; Handicrafts; Baskets; Ewe (African people)
Mawell Gbadago (left), Dzobo Sebastian (center) & Dzobo Rubben (right) pictured with a basketry fish trap (exa in Ewe) that they made as part of a British Museum Endangered Material Knowledge Programme project to document Indigenous technologies in the Banda area. In his right hand, Sebastian carries a length of coiled stick (afɔtasi in Ewe) like that used to force open the trap body; a bundle of twisted vine used to make the rope with which the fishermen weave the bamboo trap; and a wooden mallet (ɛka fokpo in Ewe) used to pound the vine (adzɔ in Ewe) as they process it into rope. Akanyakrom, 29 July, 2022.
Rights:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
Publisher:
University of Victoria Libraries
Location(s) Facet:
Akanyakrom (resettled)
Subjects:
Men's work
Subjects Facet:
Bamboo; Cordage; Fish traps; Handicrafts; Baskets; Ewe (African people)
Skilled craftsmen at the Centre for National Culture in Kumasi, Ghana demonstrate techniques of lost wax casting by making souvenir items like the brass bottle opener pictured here (bottom left). To the right (and top left) is a discarded lost-wax-casting mold that has been broken open to remove the finished objects. This mold produced two bottle openers. The inside of the mold shows the impressions left by the original wax models when they were encased in ashy clay (black matrix). Visbile toward the base of the casting mold are impressions of the tubes, out of which the melted wax drained and through which the molten brass was poured to fill the mold. Brass bottle opener height: 9 cm. Kumasi, Ghana. 4 July 2009.
