Kendella.com - African Art and Black Memorabilia

ABOUT US

What started as a fascination for a salt and pepper shaker set depicting a Black chef and maid fifteen years ago quickly became a love for and interest in collecting Black Memorabilia for Ken, while Fredella's collection of unusual African baskets and statues expanded into other forms of African Art. The history and beauty of each piece is inspiring and enlightening to our partnership, Kendella's African Arts and Black Memorabilia online business.

Born of a love to collect and share our home museum of historical and artistic works with friends and guests, we had an urge for broader exposure to others who share our love of beauty in African Art and Black Memorabilia. For indigenous African art and artifacts, we traveled to South Africa, and plan future trips to other African nations to establish ties with and make purchases with artists and local traders.

Described in the media as community activists, Ken, a retired public safety officer, and Freddie, a retired Public School administrator, co-founded and operated for thirteen years a mentorship program for high school youths in San Jose, Ca. In addition to achieving a 100 percent graduation rate, students in the program have graduated or are currently attending a number of colleges, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, Tuskegee, Yale, Morehouse, Clark of Atlanta and San Jose State. Our other projects include working closely with local government and public institutes in honoring American heroes,

such as Dr. King and other Black Americans who have made significant contributions to our society. And now, turning our hearts to our South African home as well, we are helping a school in a township in Cape Town to build and provide books for a library, this being a school that upon our visit had three books for its entire student population numbering over one thousand students. Other projects in the region include providing financial assistance to college-bound students and aid to an orphanage for children afflicted with the HIV virus and/or made orphans when their parents lost their battle with AIDS.

One may ask why we do what we do, why we want to share beauty and our own meager wealth with others. The answer is clear to us: Someone or some event prior to and early in our lives shared glimpses of a good life with us, paved the way, gave us hope, and/or supported us in our efforts to succeed. Those proverbial "bootstraps "are real, for us and for many others. We will not deny them or the backs that we climbed upon to get to this point in our lives. We also have no desire to become millionaires or to even support ourselves with profits from Kendella's African Art and Black Memorabilia. We merely want to have more to share with others.

If you are of a similar mindset about our loves and projects, we would love to hear from you. The world is not so large that we despair at not being able to expand our circle of friends and colleagues many times over through our business. Nor is it so cold that we despair of others joining in good projects.

We look forward to meeting you online either via our store or via email.

Ken and Fredella (Freddie)