Notes

Keletso Motlanke is a Yei woman living in Tubu, the lands area for Gomare. She was born in Jao, which is an island in the Okavango Delta. Her mother taught her to make baskets, and she has been making baskets since 1975. Motlanke makes open bowl-shaped baskets and closed-lidded baskets. This particular basket was a prize winner in the national competition held in 1991 at the Botswana National Museum and Art Gallery, which was run as a silent auction by Andy McGregor.

The coiling technique here uses close simple over-sewing covering one row but catching the previous row with a small ‘stitch’. The dark brown dye is made from the Euclea divinorum root bark. The pale pink is created by simmering the palm leaves with the leaves and stalks of sorghum or ‘sweet reed’ (ncha) that have red ‘rust’.

- Dr Elizabeth Terry

Provenance

Dr Elizabeth Terry Collection.