Making coconut honey in Tegallalang, Bali, Indonesia
I've always been obsessed with how things are made. There is something alchemical about ingenious systems dreamed up by humans to do simple things.
In mid-2025, my life in LA was in free fall. I'd just walked away from a job in corporate luxury that I'd held for the better part of a decade, and was looking to reconnect with my purpose. The voice deep inside said, focus on the hands, get back to the making. After so much time staring at a screen, sitting in meetings strategizing, I wanted to get closer to how things are made. How the world is made.
So I embarked on a journey to Indonesia to learn about the living craft traditions there. I found myself deeply inspired by the Balinese philosophies on balance between nature, humans, and the divine, and how that informs what people make and how they do it.
The human hand is the original tool. And paired with fire - which transforms, gives us heat, turns soil into a pot, water into gas, incense into smoke - it can do incredible things. The hand and the ember.
Ten years before, I'd met artisans in India who hammered small pieces of silver into delicate books of silver leafing. Stone carvers who made incredible surfaces out of rough hewn elemental matter. People who made zari, a golden thread to weave into saris, transformed through a process that fed rough copper wire through a series of different dies and baths heated by lightbulbs until it became something incredibly refined. In all of the reverence I had for these things and the ingenuity behind them, I also noticed that many of the artisans I met were saying one thing over and over - my craft is dying. My children don't want to carry this on. It is difficult. Sometimes what I do does not feel worth it.
In the years since, I've met as many artisans as possible, whenever I've had the opportunity. I want to learn from them, to support their work and share it with others. I've always held a dream to curate an intentional collection of joyful objects from makers around the world. In a world that sometimes can feel flattened by sameness and screens, I want to connect with living traditions in a tactile way. To choose with intention the things, experiences, and people I'm inviting into my life.
I hope that you're here because you do, too. Thank you for following along on this journey.
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