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Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
Handwoven cabinet panels and river clay knobs by Wabbani.
2 of 2
Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
Handwoven cabinet panels and river clay knobs by Wabbani.
It’s said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. For Wabbani, every finished product that arrives in St. Louis starts with a single action—cutting reeds, digging clay, and harvesting cotton—carried out 3,000 miles away, in Guyana, South America.
Wabbani is a for-profit social enterprise that seeks to connect artisans in remote areas with customers around the world through handmade add-ons that fit IKEA’s Bjorket, Ekestad, Grimslöv, and Torhamn cabinet lines— or any Shaker-style cabinet with panels that are recessed more than 1/8 inch.
The company’s inaugural collection includes river clay knobs, cotton lampshade slipcovers, and handwoven panels that can be added to cabinets. These simple additions “transform a machine-made room into a handmade room,” says Wabbani co-founder Alice Layton, a social worker and instructor at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
Layton teamed up with Paul Dinkins, a recent graduate of the MBA program at Washington University in St. Louis, to form the company in February. But the idea for Wabbani, which means “platform” in the Arawak language, started more than a decade ago, when Layton and her family spent three years living in Yupukari, Guyana. During that time, she helped villagers start small businesses to fund a public library and several community-run conservation projects. One of those businesses was a guesthouse that featured local handicrafts, including woven hammocks and basketry.
Courtesy of Wabbani
“We started to develop furniture and ideas that were essentially a hybrid of what I know as a North American and what they know as South Americans,” Layton says. “Wabbani really grew out of that experience of collaborating with craftspeople on the guesthouse.”
In addition to being handcrafted by indigenous Macushi artisans, the products reflect their culture. The knobs feature animal petroglyphs, and the panels are available in three patterns commonly made by Macushi basket weavers: Deertrail comes from the zigzag of a deer fleeing a hunter; Diamondback and Anaconda are patterned after snakes.
The products are then shipped to the United States, where they go through a finishing process. A tung oil–beeswax is applied to the panels to make them easy to clean, and the knobs are sealed with a clearcoat.
“What you get in the mail, when you order online from us, is a stack of panels that exactly fit the recesses of your cabinet doors, along with double-stick removable dots,” Layton says. “It’s designed to be DIY.”
Wabbani is currently taking preorders, and Dinkins says they will start shipping this fall. In the future, the pair hope to display the products in IKEA stores so that customers can see them in person.
“Preserving craft is a smart thing to do, because you’re preserving a culture, a habitat, you’re creating jobs,” Layton says. “The goal of Wabbani is to do this everywhere there are crafters who would like to participate.”
