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 the new book The World's Most Beautiful Shops. Flynn chose shops that reflect the place they are in: independent stores shaped by their location and heritage.

Thank you to Paula Flynn, Huda Abdulmughni, Skyli Alvarez and the Condé Nast Traveler team, and to everyone who has visited the shop and supported the makers we have been working with over the years.

This recognition comes after a long journey and an even longer story behind the house that welcomes Zeri today: a story of family, community, and the patience it takes to restore what was lost. This is that story.

In early 2013, several months after its launch at Sadu House, Zeri Crafts found its home in our old family beach house overlooking Gulf Road. Part of the Al-Hamad family block of houses in Salmiya, this little bungalow is a place where we spent weekends as kids. Direct access to the sea was interrupted in the 1970s by a landfilled highway. Still, the pool remained, and became our weekend retreat. 

Birthday parties and learning to swim: weekends at the beach bungalow

From the 1950s onwards, the extended family lived in one block, as neighbors, some two dozen houses facing each other across one private street. Because the block had so few residents, young couples from around the neighborhood would secretly meet there, which is how it came to be known as love street, sharia'a al hub.

My aunt Hessa in front of some of the family houses carrying one of the neighbor's children

The block functioned as a small community; my aunt would tell us stories of residents, young and old, gathering in the late afternoons to swim and picnic on the beach. Once a week they would come together to watch movies on a projector and screen that my father had installed in one of the gardens. This was in the early 1960s, a time when Kuwait was budding and embracing modernity. Besides the family, several houses were rented to foreigners, and together they would share this magical space of both connection and freedom.

Eventually, we moved to a new house in a more remote part of the country. My parents chose to trade community for direct access to the sea, and, with time, our relationship to the house withered. 

It was in this spirit that my sister moved to the beach house in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion in late 1991. Having just graduated from university in California, she returned to a ravaged Kuwait. Still reeling from the effects of the burnt oil wells, the country was physically wounded: black skies, soot and unbreathable air hung over it for many, many months. Our family home had been taken over by Iraqi soldiers and its contents gutted. Our garden, overlooking the sea, had been planted with landmines. It was no place to return to.

Although the little bungalow that had once been our childhood playground was still standing, many years of neglect had rendered it derelict. My sister undertook the task of restoring it and turning it into the little oasis that it once was. She lived there for several years, until she moved to London for her graduate studies. After she left, it fell into the capable hands of our friend Izzat, who took care of it and added his own touch. Eventually, it became home to several other caretakers.

Many years later, it came back into family hands, this time mine. Zeri, the company I started in 2010, was created to reconnect to a material heritage that had been rendered obsolete by modernity. Zeri was about working with artisans, acknowledging the power of natural materials, and creating beautiful objects, and the decision to move to the beach house felt both natural and right. As much as the philosophy behind Zeri shapes the space, the space shapes Zeri: simplicity, pure lines, natural materials.

Zeri tries to offer a different way of being in the world, one that is humble and respectful of those around us, birds and trees included. It is a place where care is exerted in the quest for quality and meaning. Just as the desert biome is limited in its diversity by the structural shortage of water, we try to make the most of what we have been given. Experiencing the space, being able to touch the objects, smell the 'oud and rose water, sip a cup of ginger tea and nibble on date cookies makes it both more personal and more human. There is no substitute for the sensory experience that a space and human contact provides. 

With my friend Reem enjoying date balls and ginger tea at Zeri

As the Condé Nast Traveler article puts it: "Once inside, you may find a hawk-eyed curation of many goods or a passionate pursuit of a single good. And the shopkeeper, the glue to hold it all together, can bring an irreplaceable sense of place and reason to stay just a moment more—or both."

Since opening in 2010, Zeri has aimed to do just that. We are honored to have received this recognition.

Read the full feature, "20 Extraordinary Shops Worth Traveling For, Chosen by The Shopkeepers" by Skyli Alvarez (October 16, 2026), on Condé Nast Traveler.

Cover Image by Huda Abdulmughni