156 The woodcarving industry in KenyaThe different niches of the carving market are therefore easily met by different
members within the group. Certain stages of carving such as filing, sanding
and painting require the services, for a fee, of highly experienced members
specialised to perform those operations.Photo 2. Processing (Photo by S.K. Choge)Within the study area about 15 groups exist with memberships ranging
from 10 to 700 members. Five groups are located within Malindi town alone.
The rest are dispersed all over the study area mostly in villages surrounding
Arabuko Sokoke Forest Reserve for easy access to the source of carving wood.
They construct temporary sheds in which they carve for several days and then
take the semifinished products to Malindi for finishing and sale to tourists and
other buyers.
Once delivered to the carving centre, the wood is cross-cut and split to the
desired sizes. The individual components are then transformed into
standardised animal, human figure, spoon and bowl shapes, or anything else
desired by the market, using narrow bladed adzes, files, knives and other
tools for precision carving. A completed carving is filled to refine the shape,
sanded to smoothen and painted or polished to make it shine and more
appealing. In a typical woodcarving centre or group of carvers working together
2% split the wood, 60% do the actual carving, 10% do the filing, 20% perform
sanding and 8% perform the rest of the operations such as polishing, painting
and wiping the finished carvings.
Most of the carvings made are polished with clear vanish to make them
shine brightly, even those from woods with good grain patterns such as Dalbergia
melanoxylon, Combretum schumanni, Olea europaea, Brachylaena huillensis.
Use of black polish is often associated with faking, making carvings from
alternative woods look like those from a more desired species, which usually
have the characteristic of black heartwood.09woodcarving.p65 156 22/12/2004, 11:05