Hortense, how do you consider handicraft in Africa?

For financial specialists and economists, handicraft represents significant power in term of jobs and development. On the field though, handicraft is a permanent moving line of business, a bottomless source of creativity and originality. This art is not only about pretty everyday items which are handmade in workshops, expressions of recognized know-how of ancestral traditions, as will attest basketry or jewelry. Handicraft covers a tradition that is everyday upgraded by women and men, in order to keeping on the continuation of their cultural singularity. Handicraft is sustainable, ecological and the recycling is n the center of its process. For example the plastic waste will be spinned, woven and transformed in colorful bracelets, sold in the markets (cooperative in Burkina Faso). It is inspiring, aesthetic, the signature of an African excellence often copied without ever be mentioned as the original.

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Hortense, it’s been a long time you feel the desire to write about African artisans.

I travelled a lot across the continent to meet these people who design the items of everyday life and sometimes invent exceptional creations: these are the real artists for me. The specificity of their work lies in the handmade. A genre which tends to disappear all over the world but remains very strong in Africa, as a trademark. This book follows the mission to source and archive African creations through beautiful pieces, picked up in the markets, in small shops or by street sellers. This is the "Made In Africa » for everyone.