Kitengela headquarters blew my mind. It’s like something out of a Tim Burton film-- a fantastical world contained entirely within itself—but minus the macabre and with the added plus that this place EXISTS and is REAL. Set off by itself in the dusty Athi Plain about 7 km from any paved road, the first thing you see is the top of its giant brick dome. Nani Croze, one of Kitengela’s founders, gave me a tour of the studio/gallery/residence/zoo. They make everything you can think of out of glass- from beads and glassware to mosaics, chandeliers, and large-scale sculpture. Everything is recycled and they train and employ people from the local community for both the experimental and commercial parts of the business. Truly incredible. Here's what greets you at the start of the driveway. Note the top of the dome, which houses Kitengela's roaring furnace, in the background to the right of the sculpture.
The recycling ethos extends to the bio-gas contraption far beyond the house, past the vegetable garden and the pig pens, which turns let’s say waste matter of all kinds (and they HAVE all kinds- turkey, duck, cow, pig, dog, vulture, chicken, hyrax) into natural gas that they cook and light the kilns with.
One of the many little hidden walkways. Embellishment everywhere.
Beautiful mirrored glass mosaic floor.
In Koforidua we visited Okla, who makes beautiful, high-quality recycled glass beads. Okla's family have been making glass beads for decades- he learned the art from his uncle and continues the tradition. The beads are made from crushed glass bottles that are put into clay molds and then fired in fiercely hot ovens.
Okla working out measurements for some Kora samples.
The workshop. Clay molds in the foreground, oven in the background.
Bombay Sapphire bottles yield particularly gorgeous beads. Just think: your next gin martini could be supporting the Ghanaian glass bead industry!
The bead molds are made of clay and coated with a fine layer of kaolin, which prevents the fired bead from sticking to the clay.
The insanely hot oven. It only takes fifteen minutes to fire the beads. When they're first taken out of the fire each bead glows a fiery molten red for a good minute or so-- really gorgeous!