My friend Getzel Davis recently led a group to Ghana with American Jewish World Service and since that’s where I learned my batik style, I asked him to go on an adventure and find me more batik stamps. He was rather excited at the prospect, and brought me back a few.

Turns out, to say “batik stamps” in Ghana means different things to different people. Where I learned, it involved wooden blocks like this:

In my years of practice, I have come across stamps carved from calabash gourds like these below. If you click on the picture, you can watch a video of someone using the stamps:

So, Getzel brought me calabash gourd stamps, which are super cool but a bit more fragile. Here is some of my current collection:

Here is a close up shot of the handle:

Can you build me 3 stamp handles? Winner will get a batik fabric in colors of their choice using one of these stamps!