Bead Jewelry Made from Grass? The Leaky Collection!
Just when I thought I’d seen beads made from everything, I read a story in the Boston Globe about The Leaky Collection which is a line of jewelry made out of dried grass by African women. The jewelry line was started when a long drought devasted the Great Rift Valley of Kenya and Tanzania. Philip and Katy Leakey lived among these people at the time and decided to help them fight off poverty by employing the women to harvest and craft the beads out of dried grass. From the Boston Globe story:
Twice a year, Philip and Katy Leakey create designs for natural grass bead jewelry from their home office in the Kenyan bush, south of Nairobi.
In December, about 800 Maasai women harvest the reedy grass. It is cleaned and transported to the Leakeys’ office.
Using box knives, the women painstakingly cut the hollow blades of grass into 1/8-inch-long beads. Most women will cut one cup of grass beads a day.
The beads are then dyed in 80 different colors and strung together with sparkling hand blown Czech glass beads to create one-of-a-kind “Zulugrass” jewelry! Not only is the jewelry beautiful, but it can even be wrapped and worn in lots of different ways.
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Comment by g
when the Leaky collection dries, the grass reeds split and the are thrown away. Suggested retail starts at $12 each and then you get to toss them out, at least they are bio degradable.
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[...] while I was admiring a sample of dried bamboo at one of the booths I was suddenly reminded of the bead jewelry that was made from grass in the Leaky collection. I figured if they could make jewelry out of one type of dried grass, then there’s no reason [...]