The wide world of Wild Gecko
I certainly couldn’t accomplish this series without talking about Wild Gecko. Elizabeth and Poem, her Dutch colleague, would literarily kill me. Plus, here is one place where they support the works of yours truly, graciously selling my books at their cash desk.
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Tucked in the quiet neighbourhood behind Gulf House which links to the road joining the GIMPA-Fiesta Royal road, is this wonderful world of art that could engage your curiosity all day if you visited.
It is a factory, a workshop and an art gallery all rolled into one. With their enigmatic logo of – yes – a wild gecko, this art space immediately captures your attention when you begin to see it’s rather ubiquitous signboards.
As you enter the compound, a giant elephant and giraffe statues welcome. That alone is sufficient to signal that this isn’t familiar territory.
At the very spacious Wild Gecko you would find sweaty craftsmen and women carving stools, packaging sculptures, painting drawings or colouring local batiks.
You can visit to verify this but they say Wild Gecko carries the best quality crafts in the city - furniture, jewellery, clothing, and much more from all over Africa. They offer hassle-free shopping, no bargaining, but a wonderful selection of goods in a shady, breezy, open air shop.
At Wild Gecko you will find a mini zoo, (No, I’m not making this up) where monkeys and parrots and turtles are there to watch humans admire them. There is also the playing ground for children. My little ones do enjoy the see-saw here.
This multi-faceted workshop-cum-art-emporium is the joint brainchild of Poem, a Dutch woman who has lived in Ghana nearly all of her life, and Elizabeth Vardon. It’s first and foremost a workshop, engaging artisans for the production of illustrative Adinkra memorabilia, beautifully finished wooden furniture, ceramics, bespoke textiles and jewellery wrought of silver and bull horn.
The collection here brims with handmade art objects, collectibles, housewares, tables, handbags, musical instruments, soaps, Ghanaian children’s books, bangles and other design products. The items available tend to be slightly left of centre due to Poem’s keen eye for ambitious design.
For some years now Wild Gecko Handicrafts has been in the business of improving and developing local artisanal skills towards adapting and developing traditional products and technologies to meet new demands of local and export markets for innovative and high-quality products.
The products here comprise principally handcrafted furniture and personal and household decorations and accessories. They are exported to numerous countries including the USA, UK, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Israel, Jamaica, Australia , Malaysia and continentally to Nigeria , Côte d'Ivoire, Benin and Burkina Faso.
The range here includes such items as jewellery, textiles and clothing, furniture, frames, stationery, sculptures and carvings made from materials such as brass, horn, glass, aluminum, wood and grass.
The bulk of the products are manufactured locally at their North Dzorwulu workshops or elsewhere inand around Accra and the rest of Ghana.
They also showcase products specially sourced from currently about 15 other African countries including South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Cameroon, Niger, Madagascar, Mauritania, Morocco and Ethiopia.
One special attraction at Wild Gecko is the Cow Horn Jewellery. Hand-crafted, each piece is determined by the unique properties of the different horns used.
At times the horn lends itself to straight, clean, linear forms; at others the natural fissures and imperfections of this beautiful material dictate more organic,
fluid shapes.
Here, they mix and match different metals - hand-cast bronze, silver, glass - in the designs, from necklaces to rings, bracelets and earrings. The techniques used can be traced back almost 300 years.
Though Wild Gecko sources from across Africa, many of the items are local, and often from humanitarian projects in Ghana. Now are you still wondering about where to get that unique souvenir, for that special someone? Wild Gecko is waiting for you.