Botanique Studios
Formed in 2017, Botanique Studios is a collective of women working to preserve and celebrate traditional seed work in Antigua and Barbuda. The craft artisans use tamarind seeds to create decorative and useful objects including earrings, belts, and table mats.
Seed work first began among enslaved African women who were forcibly brought to the islands.
Following emancipation from colonial rule, it became a source of income for the women.
Find Botanique Studios’ The Highlander, Whip Man and John Bull in the Music Room.
About Botanique Studios
The masterful handicraft of wild tamarind and jumbie bead seedwork was a dying art, with only five women left in the world to create it until Botanique Studios.
Botanique is putting Antiguan and Barbudan seedwork, a tradition whose African origins have outlived and transcended its challenging past, on a global stage of excellence, imbued with a message that is undeniably as beautiful, empowering, and profound as the craft itself.
Botanique Studios also deliver learning workshops to promote seed work culture as an educational tool and a form of community building.