The Friendly Beasts

We carry so many animals in so many media from so many countries that "critters" is a category in our store database. This time of year, new shipments come every week. Here are the new arrivals.

This porcupine is a wonderful example of the many South African beaded animals we import. (This was part of a shipment that led a customs agent to leave a message, "We have your wire items from South Africa here." As Kate posted previously, getting items from artisan to the market is not always easy.)

From the same South African source we have a great collection of recycled-plastic dogs. These dogs are made with the discarded remains of parade floats.
The porcupine is made by Johannesburg wire artist, and the dog by one of several employment projects around Cape Town. As our supplier notes, "There is so much more to African crafts than African carvings and tribal objects!" Here we have artists using traditional media in new ways, discovering ways to use 21st-century media, and creating new African art forms.

If you go to East Africa without a pair of flip-flops (I learned), your hosts will make sure you have some. For many people, flip-flops are the only footwear they have. People with shoes need flip-flops when they come home and take off those dust-caked shoes. (In Kampala, for example, only the major roads are paved.) Everyone uses them in the bathroom (whether you have full plumbing or a latrine for a toilet and a basin for bathing). With many flip-flops come many flip-flop scraps; Kenyan artisans have turned these scraps into delightful hippos, elephants, and warthogs.

Artisans in the Philippines have transformed the fiber of the Buri palm tree into a delightful series of animals. The palm fibers are shreeded, twisted around a wire frame, and trimmed by hand to make the brush-like texture. Eyes and ears and other details are made from seed pods, carved wood, or rope. We have these critters as stand-alone animals (our possum mother and babies is about nine inches long) and as small ornaments.

These are just four of our critters, but they represent our commitment to recycled materials, to artisans exploring new forms, to employment projects all over the world, and to delight all our animals bring.

-- Lisa

Fair-Trade Thoughts

We’ve just about wrapped up our buying for the holiday season at Crossroads Trade, and, as always, it’s highlighted emerging, complicated ethical issues in fair trade.

We do our buying in several ways. We buy directly from artisans and producer groups in some countries, and we buy through fair-trade wholesalers in others. Many factors go into deciding whether to buy directly. What quality control measures are in place? Can we get an order to port? What export hurdles exist? What trade agreement is in place between a given country and the US? How expensive and time-consuming is reliable shipping? What does it take to get our order out of US Customs? When significant obstacles exist, wholesalers play an invaluable role.

The linchpin of wholesaling is the trade shows. The New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF) is the biggest venue. Five thousand vendors showcase their wares to the retail industry, and, each year, the fair-trade presence at the show increases.

But not only retailers see the products. Industry scouts, wholesalers, and producer groups all have the opportunity to see what each other is producing. At this past show, I saw two wholesalers who were devastated to find that others had copied and were touting as their own products the wholesalers had spent years developing. In other cases, signature products of certain countries were being copied by producer groups from other countries. Telephone-wire and other recycled-basket styles that originated in South Africa are now being produced in Vietnam. They can be produced more cheaply, in part, because the hard work of product development had already been done.

Fair traders have differing perspectives on these dilemmas. Some view anything as fair game; if producing a Russian nesting doll in India will lead to employment in a destitute community, they’re all for it. Others believe it’s cultural theft to produce South African necklaces in Guatemala.

Still others take a nuanced view, as I do. I used to view production of South African style beadwork in Guatemala with horror. But after doing this work for ten years, I’ve seen that Guatemalan beadwork is becoming an art form in its own right. I was upset by Vietnamese production of South African and Brazilian recycled products, until I realized that it was better to have Vietnamese trash put to use than not.

Over the years, I’ve seen many wholesalers come and go. I’ve seen products I’ve designed exclusively for our use sold by others. The decreased value of the US dollar has sunk many a supplier.

It is a rough business. It’s a lot bigger than any one of us. Our ethical compasses may give us guidance, but we’re still working in constantly shifting terrain. As the internet continues to reduce the degrees of separation between producer and consumer, and between producers from country to country, fair-trade terrain will continue to shift. We will always be a work in progress.

Not Your Usual Recyling Center

The recycling we do at Crossroads goes way beyond taking our flattened cardboard to the local drop-off. We carry an ever-growing assortment of goods made from recycled material. Our insecticide-can cars from Burkina Faso in West Africa (one of many styles of galimoto) reflect the ingenuity of kids and adults who fashion their toys out of what's thrown away. The Burkina Faso sparkplug musicians bring a note of whimsy along with a strong sense of design.

Some of our most popular recycled offerings come from Haiti. We do business with a group of men that flattens and burns out the residue from steel oil drums. The steel is cut into a variety of critters and painted in wonderfully cheerful patterns.

We have lots of jewelry from recycled materials. Brazilian magazine pages have been fashioned into bracelets and earrings. Our can-tab bracelets always bring hoots of recognition (perhaps some customers have their own collections?) when spied in the shop.

But there's so much more here at Crossroads Trade. We'll be posting an entry about our wallets and bags made from recycled material. Our recycled items are made by artisans who can work without investing a lot of capital in supplies and who make a dent in reducing the waste stream around the world. And all our recycled roducts are a lot of fun.