Zeri Crafts has been included in Condé Nast Traveler's feature "20 Extraordinary Shops Worth Traveling For," a selection by Paula Flynn, the designer behind The Shopkeepers directory and author of ...

It was during a covid lockdown in 2021 that I found the family archive: hundreds of folders holding thousands of letters dating back to the 1940s and 50s, plus dozens of accounting books, stacked n...

A friend recently invited me to tour the Kiton production facility in Naples. A few hundred artisans work here, divided by specialty - cutters, stitchers, tailors, shirt makers, shoemakers, among o...

A few years ago, archaeologists excavating a site in Oman uncovered a fully intact ancient incense burner. Their Western colleagues had spent decades puzzling over objects like this one, cataloguin...

Growing up in Kuwait in the 70s and 80s, when the policies of the welfare state were in full swing, stories, objects and a few photographs were some of the only links to a not-so-distant yet ...

Laila Al-Hamad - On the demise of Khaleeji craftmanship and the deconstruction of traditional identity Interview by sijal.me Photograph by Huda Abdulmughni Tell us...

Smell, they say, develops and triggers memories like no other sense. A whiff of fresh zaatar bread can take you back to your childhood friend’s Friday morning breakfast table while the aroma of car...

It started with an incense burner my late aunt Hessah had gifted me, one of the dozens of burners she had hoarded and hid in the deep corners of her home. The object was small - it could easily fit...

Two Arabic words denote the concept of craft: sina’a (صناعة ) and hirfa (حرفة). Essentially, the first refers to process while the second refers to skill. Both are valid in describing craft. All Ar...