Handmade in Kenya

Abstract

The dawn of the period of manufacture intrigued many 19th-century European thinkers. Cultural and technological consequences of economic changes that began as early as the 16th century in Europe are still being assimilated throughout the world. In many African nations, the manufacturing period is now beginning on a large scale. ¹ The widespread cottage industries and diversified forms of rural production that characterized this period of Europe are, in some instances, just emerging in African communities.

Each nation—her own agriculturist and manufacturer; each individual working in the field and in some industrial art: each individual combining scientific knowledge with the knowledge of handicraft—such is. we affirm, the present tendency of civilized nations.

Peter Kropotkin, 1899