A productive and intense week at ROPE is over. After having explored their possibilities and skills, we started to create our own designs. Weaving special forms with banana bark requires moulds. Without that the baskets would automatically come into a kind of “natural weaving shape” depending on the strength of the used material and the weave. So we started making small paper models of geometrical, uncommon shapes and transferred them to original sized moulds made of cardboard. Prasanna helped us to translate our ideas language- and shape-wise to the artisans who wove the baskets. Pappa, the master artisan at ROPE also contributed to the outcome with her knowledge and interest in new shapes.
Thanks to the open minded and committed ROPE team we had a very good and interesting week. Let’s stay in contact and work on a Swiss-Indian collaboration in future.
