Sidai Designs
Located in Arusha, Tanzania, Sidai Designs produce a beaded jewelry collection based on traditional Maasai beading techniques, infused with a modern aesthetic.
Emmanuel Kasongo
Emmanuel Kasongo creates art jewelry, that is fabulous, vibrant, colorful and yet are totally wearable, statement pieces. Tubular beaded necklaces made from tiny glass beads in a myriad of unexpected colorations, filling fine Italian mesh tubes. His necklaces, bracelets and earings are a riot of color and color combinations, not simply filling a mesh tube in a single skein, but threaded, braided and knotted together in a riot of shapes with fanned and pointed ends. His African heritage clearly expressing itself through his art, honed and directed by his Parisian childhood, moving from his native Congo to Paris, where he began his career in fashion. Kasongo lived in both Paris and Milan, and worked for the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier, Marithe Francois Girbaud and Romeo Gigli, sourcing, planning and organizing fashion shows and events. He also worked as a consultant for various NGO’s and department stores such as Galleries Lafayette Paris and ABC Carpet and Home in New York.
The varied colored, finely woven mesh exterior of his pieces, compliment the brilliance of its containment, with vibrant beads used almost like a painters brushstroke dragged through a rainbow of colors. Wild, knotted necklaces snake and flare to pointed tails, running from acid yellow green, to crushed strawberry, to rose pink, lavender and russet in the space of a few inches. Sometimes snaking in solid colorations, others dotted and diffused with a multitude of colors mixed together. Reminiscent in a way of balloon tying, and the talented few that twist, rotate and tie balloons into animals of all shapes and sizes, Kasongo twists, rotates and ties his narrow bead stuffed tubes to direct the shape and style of each unique piece.
Kasonogo has been creating his unique designs since 2000, which also include palm fiber bags and purses, as well as designs for the home. His collection is a culmination of his travels around the world, and his jewelry was developed as a result of a challenge to reinterpret the traditional of African creativity into a bag for a Japanese company, which lead him to his unique mesh and glass bead combination. According to Kasongo, “My work is a combination of so many different things … a fusion of Africa (and) Europe, experiences, sights, sounds, and feelings from around the world.”
The Emmanuel Kasongo website is no longer active.
