Kazuri makes handmade ceramic jewelry in Kenya, East Africa. Many of the beads and necklace components are small, yet each is shaped by hand, without the aid of molds or forms, by one of the artists. It is then polished and kiln fired, painted and fired again.
Kazuri provides livelihoods for more than 40 Kenyan women. Lady Wood, the founder of Kazuri, began creating jewelry in the 1940s while living at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. After moving to Nairobi, she observed that many women in the surrounding villages were nearly destitute. In 1975, she and two Kikuyu women organized a ceramic workshop and taught jewelry making to the poor, and the instruction continues to this day, These women are sometimes victims of the breakdown of tribal life. They often are married to itinerant husbands. Leaving the women to support the family, these men tend to disappear when work cannot be found or when the family becomes too large.
Today Kazuri is located on a portion of the farm once owned by Karen von Blixen, the author of Out of Africa. von Blixen's coffee plantation and the other farms are in the beautiful and rural areas of the Ngong Hills outside of Nairobi. Kazuri is Swahili and means "small object of great beauty".
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(c) Just Africa Gallery, 1997-2007
February 5, 2007