Weave a Real Peace (WARP) brought us a great multinational online event this morning from Uganda, featuring artisans, farmers and artists producing and working with barkcloth. Despite multiple techno hitches, the internet link being fragile, audio crackling and vanishing, they still did a bang-up job.
Barkcloth is made literally from the bark, peeled in sheets, off a species of ficus tree. It sheds bark annually , and properly harvested, no spraying, can go on producing for anything up to 100 years. So this is sustainable.
This group annually harvests the bark, boils it then hammers it thin, in the direction of the grain. They use the boiled water as a liquid manure for crops, because they're also interested in food security. Likewise they defend the trees against deforestation, because all the trees need a mixed forest community to thrive.
You can adopt a tree, and the funds are shared around farmer, artisan and designer, with planting and propagation also funded where possible.
Most recently, Peter, an artisan, used his share to buy a new mallet.
The cloth colors you see are natural, depending on the tree and length of exposure to sunlight. The black sheets are clay-dyed.
Barkcloth is used in designer items such as bags, by people like the designer working with this group, occasionally in ceremonial clothing, and artist canvas. This material may also have important antibiotic application, currently being researched.
Anyway here's the pictures, with the small group of participants in a shot further down.
This is Peter, artisan, with a selection of mallets, including one from his grandfather and his own childhood mallet.
One of the presenters is an artist, using barkcloth as a canvas and for printmaking.
