DISCOVERY / Collaborative Basketry & Architectural Memory
A village woven from above.
Frafra Tapestry turns an aerial reading of a Ghanaian settlement into woven elephant grass. The result is a collaboration between design drawing, architectural memory and the knowledge of named master weavers.
Image: Baba Tree Master Weavers × Álvaro Catalán de Ocón / LOEWE Foundation (opens source in a new tab)Published 21 October 2026 · WHV · Public-source editorial note
The outlines can look abstract until you understand what they hold. Frafra Tapestry interprets a traditional Ghanaian settlement from above, turning the relationships between rooms, enclosures and open ground into a woven composition. A built place becomes something read through a different kind of making.
A plan becomes a woven surface
The 2024 work joins designer Álvaro Catalán de Ocón with the Baba Tree Master Weavers. The foundation’s account identifies Mary Anaba and the weaving group, describing drawings developed in Madrid and translated in Ghana through basketry techniques using natural and dyed elephant grass. The material is not a printed imitation of woven pattern.
The collaboration received a special mention at the 2026 LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize. Recognition is a useful doorway, but the work’s more lasting interest is the exchange between a contemporary image-making viewpoint and inherited manual knowledge. Credit belongs to the weavers as well as the designer. The collective skill is part of the authorship, not an anonymous production service behind a better-known name.
Keep the makers in the story
Explore the wider field of Ghanaian basketry before treating this one work as an isolated collectible. Notice changes in density, contour and the placement of dark lines. The pictured tapestry is not a standard basket or a promise of current stock. What holds value is a way to preserve and reinterpret cultural memory through a living practice, while giving the reader new eyes for the much smaller woven objects that may enter everyday life.
Source and context.
LOEWE Foundation: Frafra Tapestry and the 2026 special mention ↗
LOEWE Foundation: 2026 finalists and continuing craft programme ↗
The photograph depicts Frafra Tapestry from 2024, not a standard retail basket. The 2026 Singapore exhibition has ended. Award recognition is not an independent valuation, and WHV has not inspected or authenticated an available work.
Source checked 21 October 2026. WHV interpretation is distinct from the source’s account.
Explore Collaborative Basketry & Architectural MemoryFOLLOW YOUR CURIOSITY
Where this leads.
Different subjects. A reason to connect them.
Continue the idea
Crystal that carries handwriting.
A crystal collaboration contrasts the translation of an architectural plan into weaving with a new graphic language on an old form.
Contemporary Crystal & Authored Surface Work
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A transformed urban site changes the comparison from recording a settlement’s memory to making its old fabric useful again.
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An unexpected connection
The picture seen from the other side.
Another weaving tradition makes the work behind a finished image something the reader can investigate more closely.
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