Cleft weaving culture is a handiwork done by the product of personal effort especially work of skill or wisdom, made from thin strips of cleft willow-salix and cane calamus or rattan.
The stems of several species of willow and climbing cane are widely used to produce household and commercial goods.
Cane is mostly found in forest areas, the wet ever green zone. There are three types of cane used for weaving known as Eremospatha specie, lacosperma opacum and calamus deeratus.
The flexibility and strength of the cane stem makes it ideal for binding and weaving. In rural areas where it is available cane figures prominently in material culture, houses, roofs, furniture, storage containers, baskets ladders, fish traps, and crop drying mats are made with cane.
In rural areas people weave baskets and other household items for their own use, as well as for sale, while urban weavers concentrate on urban goods such furniture as cane chairs, tables and shelves.
The most common cane products are baskets for which there is a large nd steady demand. They are used by the vast majority of both urban and rural people. While there are many basket types, those made from cane are preferred, because of their durability and wherever available, they are the most common type used. In addition, cane baskets are the most common type of storage container used by market traders to retain okra, tomatoes, that need air to prevent rot. The vast majority of market traders prefer cane baskets to all other containers because of their efficient storage qualities and because they are durable and cheap.’
In the ancient and olden days society, the collection, processing and trade of cane and cane products involved many thousands of rural and urban people, while most cane gatherers, baskets weavers and cane furniture artisans were men, youths and school boys, girls and women dominated trade on cane products.
In some areas it is clear that supplies of cane and cane products have diminished greatly;’ even in this modern era many people have expressed fears about the dwindling supply of cane as a result of forest depredation.
In some communities, especially where there is a reliance on cane for cash income, there is a growing resentment of outsiders coming for cane. These people feel strongly that forest resources should provide direct support to their own community development.
Cane is gathered by local people and urban collection groups who come from urban areas and from far afield. Rural gatherers collect on a part- time basis during slack period in the agricultural cycle. Urban groups on the other hand, go to collection sites for several months and gather on a full-time basis.
Generally, cane is collected from forest reserves, although in some areas it is collected from fallow lands as well as forests outside reserves.
In some areas, villages no longer collect cane because nearby cane forest have diminished. In some locality, cane are gathered for local consumption, especially for house building, repair and for basket weaving. Few wholesale traders purchased cane at market sites, nor do they rely on gatherers to bring cane to urban centres. Rather they established direct links with rural gatherers or sent urban groups to collect in the forest.
There were a growing number of cleft processing enterprises in urban centres who produced a range of goods for the urban household and tourist market. These skilled workers made sets of cane furniture, many types of basket, baby’s cots, and other household items. Most processors relied on roadside sales, although a few deal with regular buyers.
While cane processing is considered a small industry, it is evident that more and more people rely on it for their livelihood. In addition, these enterprises employed more than seventy persons on full time, and used more than 600,000 metres of cane ropes to produced items worth millions of naira or pounds sterling. In most rural communities, people weave baskets largely to meet local demand. They produced on a part time basis, generally on order or where they need cash. They supplied most of the baskets used in farming, house building and trades. In some communities, majority of households are dependent on basket weaving for their livelihood which compared favourably with other rural wage earning activities, while some claimed that weaving earned them more than white collar jobs.
Cleft weaving culture was large and diffused in the ancient societies, supplied many different end users and during the colonial era cleft basketry and cane weavers got prizes in competitions while handiwork was a class lesson in schools.
The retail basket trade was concentrated in urban markets. The traders involved generally sell a variety of products to counter the market fluctuations in demand.
Weavers varied in their approach to selling, some peddled their wares, others wove to order for urban traders. At most, urban market weavers sold to retail traders but at week day markets, weavers generally sold their wares directly to the public, however, some weavers rarely took their clefts to distant markets because, they relied on sales regular basket wholesalers who came to their village markets.
Clefts weaving markets fluctuations in the demand for articles were linked to seasonality of trading activities such as the fishing season, and the farming calendar. The distinction between rural and urban markets highlighted the fact that rural markets catered largely for rural den, while urban market catered for traders and urban consumers.
Cane can be gathered in any season. There were seasonal fluctuations in the supply of clefts or woven articles, reflecting a changing number of producers over the season as well as poor access to supply areas during the rains.
As in the case with many other processing and gathering activities, more people entered the business during the slack period in the agricultural cycle, and in many areas, the market was flooded with woven articles during the school holidays when children often take up weaving as hobby and so the Government itself should reintroduce handiwork culture in cleft weaving in schools by encouraging cane production through its promotion of export of processed goods.
|
