He uses wood he says most Ghanaians consider cast-offs – mottled, split, featured wood – and uses simple joints to creature bold and gorgeous stuff. He says he started using these cast-offs initially because of the difficulty in aquiring properly dried wood. These pieces, abandoned by mills and carpenters, lay neglected in the hot African sun, becoming naturally dried to perfection!
We got into an interesting about respecting one’s own materials – or rather – about how his “countrymen” tend not to. While a well-woven straw mat on a firm floor might provide a more comfortable bed, the “Western” ideal of a raised bed is imitated to produce a lumpy ash-foam mattress that looks but doesn’t really feel like that imitated symbol. Similarly, he says that the straightest, neatest, most industrial-looking slabs of wood are considered more desirable than the characterful pieces he goes after.
And he says he even has troubles getting his workers to take his furniture seriously: they consider that they are working with garbage, and so treat it as such.
I thought of many other examples in West Africa in which local-materials made sturdier and less-expensive products, yet were disparaged for more industrial-looking yet flimsier imports. The local sandal made of old truck tires versus the cheap chinese flipflop, the hand-crafted pull-car made of tomato tins versus the cheap chinese matchbox car.
In a way, his work is similar to that of Tei, in that valueing a material locally considered to be refuse has become an integral part of their work.
