The South African Novice Forager's Fieldnotes
The forests, veld, and coastlines of South Africa are a beautiful and abundant cacophony of fynbos, seaweed, edible plants, and botanicals. By simply exploring flora and fauna around you, you could discover mushrooms that pop up overnight, edible weeds and shellfish, seaweed, roots, and plenty of shoots and flowers. However, foraging can also easily be done in the neighborhood you find yourself in. It is surprising how many useful plants are growing in the areas we live in, and yet most people haven't a clue and either ignore the plants or perhaps go as far as killing them as weeds!
At any time, in any place, food is there for the taking if only people knew how to look. Forager’s Fieldnotes is a beginner’s handbook helping readers to start recognizing the rich possibilities that surround them.
THE CONTENT
Each page in this book has two tabs, which, if pulled, reveal more information about the plants. The paper in the little window is hand-made and contains the seeds/flowers of each plant. It is also embossed with an illustration of the plant. I hand-sculpted each illustration from clay and used it in a 'wet embossing' method. When one pulls the tab on the side, this paper is revealed. The hand-made paper also forms part of a pocket with yet another tab, which, if pulled, reveals information about the planting of each plant. The tab at the top of the page reveals an envelope containing recipe cards.
THE BOX
The contents of this project are kept safe in this half-clamshell binder which I fashioned from an old ring binder and some project board. The box is kept closed with a magnetic flap on the side. When the box is opened, one can find loose sheets of hand-made paper for planting and a notepad that I made using a Japanese stab-stitching method neatly placed in two built-in pockets.
What you see now is not what this project was intended to be. This project was supposed to be a book with hand-made paper, traditionally bound with hard cover and all. Following weeks of trial and error, I realised that what I initially set out to do was not only impractical but slightly impossible too. However, I'm glad things did not go exactly to plan - having to strategize, and prototype was such an effective way to help me understand what this project needed to be.
Unfortunately, I did not keep records of the box-making - I decided to go with the box very late in the process after several book-binding methods proved to be ineffecive.
