Two fine examples from my friend’s personal collection of Zulu imbenges. Imbenge is the Zulu name for small bowl or saucer, an object that used to have the specific function of covering clay and palm Ukhambas (beer baskets) to keep the liquid insect and dust free. Indigenous to Zululand, these telephone wire bowls started to appear in the 1960s, when discarded plastic-coated copper telephone wire became more abundant than ilala palm baskets, the staple weaving material until then. The examples in the image (about 4 inches –10 cm.- in diameter) have a thick copper wire ring and are woven from that outside edge toward the center. Even if they are too porous to hold liquids, they are quite sturdy and stable, in terms of form, to hold anything else. My friend tells me that the bowls were crafted by Zulu men who became weavers after being injured in the gold and diamond mines of South Africa. A cooperative teaches them the weaving techniques and employs them thereafter. At some point, Zulus used to down telephone poles to get wire for their weaving, when the availability of recycled material was scarce. Today there is a more stable structure to cover the cost of the raw material: the coop foots 25%, the South African Government another 25% and the telephone company the remaining 50%. Over 800 full time weavers and their families are supported, with a fair living wage, by this innovative and well-established cottage industry.
