I have experimented with growing my own calabashes over the past three years and find it quite a helpful plant in the garden and at home, once harvested. However, the yield of the plant and the way ones body reacts to so called ”NEW FOODS”, made me consider picking up a few and decorating them. I actually painted my first one, which I found in a carpenter slash pastors workshop space in Strand, under bits of antique wood off-cuts, covered in spider web residue and dust. He said I can recycle it, so I painted an awesome black and white floral design on it, and sold it for R600. The seeds from some of these calabashes were saved and planted by me in the past 3 years in a few places in Johannesburg and even as far as Mpumalanga lol. How this seed travels, and can be dormant and stored for hundreds of years is also quite fascinating.
In order to appreciate this form of artwork more, it is good to have an understanding of this plant too. This particular calabash is a vine grown for its fruit, which can either be harvested young and used as a vegetable, or harvested mature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil, or pipe. The fresh fruit has a light-green smooth skin and a white flesh. Rounder varieties are called calabash gourds. They grow in a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle shaped, or slim and serpentine, more than a meter long. Because bottle gourds are also called “calabashes”, they are sometimes confused with the hard, hollow fruits of the unrelated calabash tree, its latin name is Crescentia cujette, whose fruits are also used to make utensils, containers, and musical instruments.
Here are some pictures of gourds that I painted and still have for sale from 2013 and 2014. I have a few on 4TH Avenue in Linden outside the wool and fabric shop, and these are in my cottage in Linden. They make excellent incense holders and interesting deco, something that will definitely get your guests talking about art I hope 
My number is 072 146 9017 and email nntreasure@gmail.com
Please note that if I do not respond promptly I am in my garden at the Pirates Sports Club literally 
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