The Kenyan connection - Brown's wooden birds
This blog is dedicated to my Aunt Erika, Phil's sister and Seonee's sister in law, who introduced us to our wonderful bird supplier. She became obsessed with the idea that we should stock items from Kenya, and that we should have a room in the shop dedicated to it called 'The Kenyan connection"! Well, we never did manage to do the Kenya room (we do only have basically two rooms in the whole shop) but this blog is for her.
A bit of history, back in the 80's Erika and her husband went to Kenya to work for the charity Tear Fund primarily organizing water projects. So they jetted off and spent the next four years helping the local communities whilst living in the most rudimentary conditions and even having their two sons out there. They then returned to England but just over 20 years later Erika's husband (now fluent in Swahili) was offered another job in Kenya and the couple set off again. While out there Erika hosted lots of friends and family and soon found all the best tourist attractions and things to do. One of Erika's top trip items was a visit to the 'bird man' who hand crafted and painted beautiful African birds.
When I first visited in Kenya 2016 I brought my parents a heron back and they loved it! Later my parents and I visited Africa together and once against visited the 'bird man' and bought soooo many birds. Soon talk turned to selling them in the shop. Erika gave the man, now a friend, an English bird book and he began to create birds from this book without ever having seen them before. He is extremely gifted and has been carving since childhood. Since then we have been ordering birds from Kenya on a regular basis.
Our wooden birds are by far the most popular thing on the website and I am not surprised, each one is hand made and painted, making it truly unique. Over the years we have expanded the birds we do, and now do handing birds, standing birds, Guinea Fowl families, herons, keyrings and birds on sticks.
We are the only supplier of these birds in the UK and are proud to support one man and his family, particularly in the times of COVID.
Shop our wooden bird collection online here, and take advantage of our Wooden bird website offer - spend £40 or more on wooden birds of any type and get a free hanging bird. Just add the hanging bird you want to your basket and the cost will automatically be taken off, providing you already have £40 or more worth of wooden birds in your basket.