Artisan Hand weaving
THE RFB JOURNAL

Field Notes

On craft, provenance, and living with handwoven art.

Every piece in the shop is the result of months of skilled work in a specific place — by a named artisan, using techniques passed across generations. This journal is where that context lives. Notes from visits to artisan communities, practical guidance on displaying and caring for handwoven art, and the occasional deep dive on what makes one tradition different from another. Read slowly. These objects were made that way.

Journal

Why I Pay Wounaan Weavers Before the Basket Is Finished
Why I Pay Wounaan Weavers Before the Basket Is Finished
How the RFB deposit system works: monthly payments to our Wounaan partner who distributes to master weavers, plus off-cycle deposits when families need them.
What Is Yanchama? The Amazon Bark Cloth That Dresses Ticuna Figures
What Is Yanchama? The Amazon Bark Cloth That Dresses Ticuna Figures
Yanchama is Amazon bark cloth made from the inner bark of Poulsenia armata. How Ticuna artisans prepare it and use it to dress ceremonial pucuna figures.
What a Basket Buys: School Fees, Houses, and Clean Water
What a Basket Buys: School Fees, Houses, and Clean Water
When a handwoven basket sells, the money pays school fees in Panama, builds houses in Rwanda, and drills wells in Ghana. The documented weaver-income ledger.
The Women Behind Gahaya Links: 5 Master Weavers Who Rebuilt Rwanda's Basketry
The Women Behind Gahaya Links: 5 Master Weavers Who Rebuilt Rwanda's Basketry
Joy Ndungutse and Janet Nkubana founded Gahaya Links after Rwanda's 1994 Genocide. Today 5,000+ women weave across 52 cooperatives. Meet the master weavers.
How Much Do Wounaan Baskets Cost, and Why
How Much Do Wounaan Baskets Cost, and Why
Wounaan baskets from Panama's Darién cost $80 to $20,000. Here's what determines the price: months of dye work, sometimes years of weaving, all by hand.
What Is Hösig Di? The Wounaan Basket Fine Enough to Hold Water
What Is Hösig Di? The Wounaan Basket Fine Enough to Hold Water

Hösig di is the Wounaan name for coiled baskets stitched from chunga palm so tightly they hold water with no sealant. A look at how they are made and how to recognize an authentic one.

Why weaving is women's work across five Indigenous traditions: Wounaan, Werregue, Agaseke, Bolgatanga, and Ticuna.
Why Weaving Is Women's Work: Five Traditions, One Constant
An essay on why basketry remains women's work across five Indigenous traditions — and how that constant shapes everything from materials to markets.
Why Indigenous baskets look modernist: the geometric vocabulary the Bauhaus borrowed from Wounaan, Werregue, and Agaseke traditions.
Why Indigenous Baskets Look Modernist
A field-notes essay on why Indigenous baskets predate, and quietly influenced, the geometric vocabulary the Bauhaus made famous.
What makes handwoven art valuable: rarity, traceable provenance, named makers, and time-tested cooperative supply.
What Makes Handwoven Art Valuable? Why Indigenous Baskets and Masks Appreciate Over Time
A guide to the factors that make handwoven Indigenous art appreciate over time, written for collectors making their first or hundredth purchase.
How to display handwoven art: room-by-room placement guide for Agaseke, Wounaan, Werregue, and Bolgatanga baskets.
How to Display Handwoven Art: A Room-by-Room Placement Guide for Collectors
A practical room-by-room guide for hanging and arranging handwoven Indigenous baskets and masks, with scale and lighting tips for each piece.
Where to buy authentic handwoven Indigenous art: cooperative sourcing, provenance, and avoiding fakes.
Where to Buy Authentic Handwoven Art from Indigenous Artisans
A guide to buying handwoven Indigenous art with confidence: how to identify authentic pieces, vet sellers, and trace provenance to the maker.
Ghana vs Rwanda baskets compared: Bolgatanga vs Agaseke materials, scale, palette.
Ghana vs Rwanda Baskets: Which Works Best in a Modern Interior?
How to choose between Ghana Bolgatanga and Rwanda Agaseke baskets — materials, scale, palette, and where each belongs in a modern room.
Two Colombian Indigenous traditions: Werregue baskets of the Chocó and Ticuna figures of the Amazon, compared.
Two Colombian Traditions: Werregue Baskets and Ticuna Figures Compared
A comparison of two Colombian Indigenous traditions — Werregue basketry from the Chocó and Ticuna figures from the Amazon — and what they share.
Wounaan vs Emberá baskets: two Indigenous Panamanian traditions compared by materials, motifs, and makers.
Wounaan vs Emberá Baskets: The Full Comparison
A full side-by-side of Wounaan and Emberá basketry — materials, motifs, makers, and how to tell them apart on sight.
Emberá woven masks of Panama: cultural meaning, the makers, and how a sacred form became celebrated craft.
Emberá Masks: What They Are, What They Mean
An introduction to Emberá woven masks — what they mean in Emberá culture and how the tradition reaches collectors today.
What are Ticuna ceremonial dolls? The Pelazón tradition of the Colombian Amazon.
What Are Ticuna Ceremonial Dolls? The Pelazón Tradition of the Colombian Amazon
A guide to Ticuna ceremonial dolls and the Pelazón tradition — the rite of passage they honor in the Colombian Amazon.
Ghana elephant grass baskets: the Bolgatanga tradition. Materials, dyes, and the women weavers behind them.
What Are Ghana Elephant Grass Baskets? The Bolgatanga Tradition Explained
How Bolgatanga weavers in Ghana's Upper East Region turn elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum) into sculptural baskets that travel the world.
Werregue baskets and plates of Colombia's Chocó region, woven by Wounaan artisans from werregue palm.
What Are Werregue Baskets? The Chocó Weaving Tradition Explained
An introduction to Werregue baskets and plates — the Wounaan Chocó tradition, the werregue palm, and the dyes that give it depth.
Who are the Wounaan? Panama's master weavers. History, villages, and named artists.
Who Are the Wounaan? Panama's Most Collectible Baskets Explained
Who the Wounaan are: history, language, the villages where their basketry is made, and the artists shaping the tradition today.
What is an Agaseke basket? Rwanda's peace basket. History, materials, the women of Gahaya Links, and its place on the national seal.
What Is an Agaseke Basket? The History and Meaning Behind Rwanda's Peace Basket
The Agaseke — Rwanda's basket of peace — has roots that go back generations and a presence on the national seal. Here's what you need to know.
Who are the Emberá? Panama's Darién people. Rivers, genip dye, silver coins in family necklaces.
Who Are the Emberá? Rivers, Genip Dye, and Silver Coins
An introduction to the Emberá people of Panama's Darién — the rivers their villages line, the genip dye they wear on their skin, and the silver coins they thread into family necklaces.

View Curated Collections

Ghana Sculptural Baskets: Custom XL from Northern Ghana
Ghana Sculptural Baskets: Custom XL from Northern Ghana
Handwoven Artisan Baskets from Around the World
Handwoven Artisan Baskets from Around the World
Embera woven hummingbird and toucan masks handmade with palm fiber and natural dyes in Panama — symbolic Indigenous bird masks by RFB Woven Art
Bird Masks: Woven Sharp.