Bolga Pot Basket

Handcrafted in our signature form in a warm, storied location in a small town in Ghana, the Pot Basket balances elegance and function, elevating your space while carrying a meaningful story of craft and connection.  Crafted using a specialized single-weave technique, the Pot Basket features generous, ballooned proportions that create a striking silhouette, both functional and sculptural.

Origin of the Design 

A deeply personal story is at the heart of the Woven Worldwide Pot Basket. Inspired by our founder’s first encounter with her grandmother, Eva, this basket is a tribute to the warmth, resilience, and tradition that shaped her heritage.

At eight years old, she vividly remembers watching Grandmother Eva prepare porridge outdoors over a coal pot—a dadesan—with the earthy scent of smoke billowing in the air, mixed with roosters crowing in the background. Decades later, that simple coal pot—a vessel of nourishment and family togetherness—became the muse for Woven Worldwide’s product design team.

Materials with Meaning

Elephant grass is renewable, durable, and grows tall along the banks of streams of living water. These steady flows nourish the earth, helping the grass develop strength and flexibility. Harvested by hand in early morning, while the stalks still hold moisture, it is stripped of its rough outer husk to reveal a smooth, pliable core prepared to bend without breaking. 

Over time, the grass matures in colour from fine, pistachio green deepening into a warm wheat. It’s a raw material that speaks not only through colour, but through climate, timing, and touch. This rain-fed transformation, shaped by the sun and time, gives each reed its distinct character. We call it elephant grass,  but it is more than raw material, it’s a harvest gathered patiently by hand, season after season.

From Field to Form

Harvested under the same sun that ripens millet and shea trees, each Woven Worldwide Pot Basket™ carries the symbol of careful stewardship—woven with resilient elephant grass harvested by farmers who understand the land, tending to it with wisdom, reverence, and a deep understanding. These matriarch farmers nurture the soil to produce a crop that is both sustainable and abundant. The elephant grass is then sold to principal artisans who weave from dawn until the soft fading light of dusk, upholding generations of craftsmanship. These traditions echo the principles of sowing and reaping, and are thoughtfully curated by us to bring grounded design into your interior space.

Why It Belongs

The Pot Basket is the kind of piece that settles into a home and stays. Its rounded, ballooned form can cradle firewood by the hearth, soften the corner of a living room with folded blankets, or keep vegetables within reach in the kitchen. In smaller spaces, it becomes a single, grounding object—easy to lift and carry, yet large enough to hold the odds and ends.

The wide base gives it balance on uneven floors, the open mouth allows air to pass through stored linens or produce, and the curve of its sides recalls the steady warmth of the dadesan it was shaped after. Over time, the grass deepens in tone, taking on the marks of the life around it.

It’s a vessel you don’t have to think about often, yet you notice it in the quiet moments—when you set something inside, or when your hand brushes against its textured rim. That’s when you remember it was made start to finish by one person, in a place where baskets are still crafted to last.

Story Behind The Weave

When the design process began, we didn’t just bring sketches to the workshop—we brought the dadesan itself, the cast aluminum coal pot that inspired the Pot Basket. The artisans laughed when they saw it, amused that we’d gone to such lengths, yet their hands instinctively reached for it, weighing its heft, tracing its cool ridges. 

We sat together on wooden benches, holding it close  as Albert crafted the first Pot Basket, rounding the belly and widening the base slightly from the original pot. Thompson was later brought on, and one afternoon his younger brother Peter picked up Albert’s basket, eager to try. His interest was genuine, but we explained that baskets like this are the work of a single hand. Two weavers on one piece can leave shifts in form and tension, the way two people writing on the same page can change the penmanship.

By the time we finished, the dadesan’s shape had found its way into the basket.

Stewardship

The Pot Basket is a visual and tactile reminder of stewardship. It reflects respect for the resources given to us, and a deep appreciation for the skill and wisdom that have been passed down through generations.

Stewardship here is visible in the time invested in each basket, the care taken in selecting materials, and the precision demanded by the rounded form at the base. Each basket requires hours of patient labour—adjusting, testing, and perfecting the form to ensure balance and durability.

For those who value stewardship, the Pot Basket serves as a visual and tangible reminder of the responsibility we hold to honour the resources we are given, to co-labour with the hands that shape them, and to create spaces that reflect gratitude.

Dimensions (inches)

Small 12 W x 10 H