Leonie and the Women Weavers of Senegal

A basket can look like a simple thing. A place for fruit, a spot of color on a wall, a bit of texture by the door. But pick up a handwoven Senegalese basket and look closely, and you’ll see something else: hundreds of patient coils, each one placed by hand, each one part of a tradition that has carried families for generations. Behind every one of ours is a real person. Her name is Leonie.

Meet Leonie

Leonie comes from the Wolof villages of northwestern Senegal — the basket-weaving heartland around Mékhé and the Mborine region, where the craft is woven into daily life and passed from mother to daughter to granddaughter.

I found her the way the best things tend to happen: through a personal connection. When I decided I would only ever work with real basket makers — never warehouses, never middlemen — I went to Senegal to find them myself. My tailor, the woman who had made my kitchen apron, told me about Leonie and where to find her. So I flew out and met her in her own village, in person.

That was six years ago. We’ve worked together ever since.

Leonie is a mother and a grandmother, and weaving runs through her family the way it runs through her region — generational, inherited, alive. But what stays with me most from that first meeting is simply how she is: warm, happy, endlessly kind and caring. Over the years she’s become far more than a maker I source from. She guides me on style and color, teaches me what works and why, and somewhere along the way we became something like sisters.

When you hold one of her baskets, that’s what you’re really holding — the work of a woman I know, trust, and love.

 

The art of the Senegalese basket

Senegal’s coiled baskets are made entirely by hand, using a technique passed down through families and women’s circles for generations.

It begins with local grasses and reeds, gathered and bundled into a long, thin core. The weaver then coils that core round and round, binding each new row tightly to the last and wrapping it in strips of vibrant color as she goes — today often durable plastic strips, where weavers once used natural palm fiber. Row by row, a flat base rises into curved walls, until a bowl, a hamper, or a wall piece emerges — strong enough to last decades, soft enough to fold and carry.

It’s slow, exacting work. A single basket can take many hours, sometimes days, and the tension has to be perfect from the first coil to the last. The result is the look Senegalese baskets are loved for the world over: bold, joyful color spiraling out in flawless rhythm, with the small, beautiful irregularities that only a human hand leaves behind.

 

Women’s hands, women’s power

In Senegal, basket weaving is overwhelmingly the work of women — and it is far more than craft. For many, it’s an income, an independence, and a way to provide for children and elders. Weavers often work within cooperatives and circles, sharing materials, knowledge, and the rhythm of the work, and turning a traditional skill into real economic ground beneath their families’ feet.

When you buy a handwoven basket, you’re not just buying décor. You’re helping sustain that ground. Every purchase reaches past a single pair of hands to the household, and often the community, behind them.

 

What Leonie’s baskets bring home

A Bozzena basket does what the best handmade objects do — it works, and it tells a story. Use it for fruit or bread, for blankets or toys, for storage that doesn’t hide. Hang a set on the wall and let the color do what art does. Wherever it lands, it brings warmth, texture, and a little of Senegal’s sunlight into the room.

And because it’s made by hand, no two are ever the same. The one you choose is the only one exactly like it in the world.

 

Made to your measure

Leonie is, quite simply, the queen of custom. Whatever you can picture, she can weave — any size, any shape, any color story you have in mind. Designing around a specific shelf or nook? Need a basket built to an exact height, or a set in a palette that matches a room? Send us your measurements and your vision, and Leonie will make it by hand, just for you.

It’s one of the rare gifts of working directly with a master artisan: you’re never limited to what’s in stock. You can have exactly what you imagine.

To commission a custom basket, reach us at info@bozzena.com — and if you’re a designer, ask about custom orders through our Trade Program.

 

A thread that reaches back

Every basket Leonie weaves is part of something larger — a tradition kept alive, a family supported, and a thread that ties your home directly to hers. That’s the whole idea behind Bozzena: beauty you can live with, made by people we can name, in a way that gives back to the places it comes from.

Browse our handwoven basket collection, meet our other makers on the Artisan Partners page, or learn how every purchase supports education in Mali on our Giving Back page.