Father's Day Sale!

In honor of Father's Day, we're having our very first sale! From today (6/15) through Sunday (6/20) get 20% off ALL stationery products by entering the code DADSDAY at checkout. This includes cards, journals, and stationery sets!

Handmade Paper Himalayan Life Stationery Set - 8 cards

Handmade Writing Set - Ancient Kingdom Nepal

New Products June 2010: a smattering

Handmade Japanese Washi Art $86

These Washi Art posters hail from Kyoto, Japan. Artisans first make a large sheet of handmade paper (3 feet long and 2 feet high) and then create a design. They break the design into layers by color, and develop a separate silk screen for each color. By overlaying colors, textures, and patterns, the artwork looks almost embossed, and the gold paint literally shimmers in the light.

Handmade Paper Card from Nepal - Sea Design $3

Bhaktapur Paper, a favorite Nepali organization, employs a number of local artisans in their paper-making business. Each card is handmade (using pulp from a tree called lokta) and then block-printed with a traditional design.

Recycled Paper Journal from India $13

We bought these journals from an old man in a little hole-in-the-wall shop in Jaipur, India. He worked just outside the "Pink City" downtown area, and makes all the journals himself. They're filled with recycled paper, and the outside is stamped with a design, painted, and then embroidered. When we told the old man that we ran a shop, he packaged everything in a box for us, and threw in a few free postcards - what a guy.

Bowl with lid from Onta, Japan $35

Ah, Onta. In this little town in the Japanese mountains, potters use only kick wheels and wood-burning kilns, and the town has designed a see-saw lever using hydroelectric power from a local stream to pound the clay. Famous for the cream and chocolate design, Onta pottery is often referred to as "folk pottery" because it is both functional and beautiful.

Once Upon A Tea Time

Priya at Once Upon a Tea Time recently spot-lighted our wood block stamps on her blog. For the less craftily-inlined, wood block stamps are created when artisans hand carve into high quality teak blocks. Although they're part of cultural traditions all over the world, currently the majority of wood block stamps hail from India. Artisans then use these stamps to print beautiful and elaborate patterns.

The real trick is that they must create a separate stamp for each color used in a design. Master printers estimate that one block will last for 1,500 meters of fabric, and once it runs out the design is often retired.

While in India, we learned a few ways to tell if fabric is authentically block-printed. So remember these out the next time you're looking at ethnic textiles:

• Designs do not "line up" every single time - on the blue ginko fabric above, you can see how the yellow color occasionally bleeds outside the lines of its flower petals. That's not a flaw - that's just the sign that an artisan didn't line up the stamps perfectly.
  
• With a little practice, you should be able to see the "block" and how the print repeats. Blocks are rarely larger than a foot square, for ease of use.

A Trade For A Trade

A Trade For A Trade made the Billings, Montana news today. Check out the full article here. Now some strangers know about us, which is really all for the best.

A non-inclusive list of things currently for sale: slippers that look like sheep, Japanese bowls with lids, peacock journals, and one camel stamp. It's good stuff.