About Tjanpi Desert Weavers
Tjanpi is Pitjantjatjara for dry desert grass. Since 1995 the weavers of the NPY Women's Council have gathered it on country, bound it into coiled bundles and stitched it with raffia, wool and emu feathers into baskets — and into full-scale grass animals and a four-by-two-metre Toyota.
The system takes its ground from the oxidised red soil the work is made and photographed on. Colour arrives in bands, never gradients. Rows are hand-paced, so nothing repeats exactly. Every edge is allowed to stay fibrous.
- Origin
- NPY Lands — Central and Western Desert, Australia
- Era
- 1995 to present (Tjanpi Toyota 2005; NATSIAA win the same year)
- Key figures
- NPY Women's Council · the twenty Blackstone (Papulankutja) weavers of the Tjanpi Toyota
- Movements
- Aboriginal women's art centres and social enterprise · contemporary Australian fibre art · coiled basketry
Tjanpi Desert Weavers design spec
Colors
Background
Surface
Primary
Secondary
Accent
Text
Typography
Alegreya SansHeadings
KarlaBody
Space MonoMono
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