The telephone wire basket is a relatively recent craft development which reflects the ingenuity of craftspeople. Brightly coloured telephone wires are used to great creative effect, decoratively covering objects such as bottles and walking sticks, or made into plates and baskets." (Todres, 1998 Guide to South African Arts, Culture and Heritage).


Most of the wire weavers come from an area just outside of the city of Durban, South Africa. It is a sprawling informal settlement with very basic houses - usually handmade with whatever can be found to use as building materials (i.e. old corrugated iron sheeting for roofs on mud or wooden walls). A few weavers have more sophisticated homes of bricks, but most live in very temporary type structures with no electricity, running water or sewage systems. Very few of the weavers have had any formal education, although their children are now attending schools. The community was settled when the weavers were forced to abandon their shacks in areas affected by political violence in the 1980's.


Wire basketry was innovated by master weaver Elliot Mkhize in the early 1970's. Basket weaving is a craft passed down through from one generation to the next. Most wireweavers are women and men who had no previous weaving skills and began making baskets out of financial necessity due to rampant unemployment.

The origins of telephone wire weaving is traced to Zulu night watchmen in urban areas who, to banish loneliness and boredom on night shifts, took to weaving colored wire around their traditional sticks. Soon this technique was adapted to making izimbenge (beer pot covers), the wire plates we have today. This craft now encompasses enormous creativity in diverse forms.

The coiling technique used for making plates is unique to the greater Durban area. Plates are started from the middle and expand outward. The wire is wound around the core wire in outward circles, which is much harder on the fingers than the soft wire technique!

Designs utilize traditional beadwork patterns and have been extended to include figuration and text, usually depicting objects or animals in the artist’s daily lives or text that has some personal or social meaning. As of late, the HIV red ribbon is more and more commonly seen, an indication of the magnitude of this disease. It is ravaging the African population, which is compromised due to a lack of nutrition, poor housing, inadequate medical care, and limited employment opportunities.