I started Zeri Crafts in Kuwait in 2010, but the idea began earlier and elsewhere.
Between 2001 and 2006, I lived in Thailand with my family, working for an international organization on economic development programs in Cambodia and Laos. It was there that I encountered something I had not expected: a craft industry that was both culturally alive and economically viable; high craftsmanship combined with contemporary design to produce objects of genuine beauty. A win for both culture and livelihoods.
It was in Laos that I met Carol Cassidy. Carol runs Lao Textiles in Vientiane, a workshop where silk is woven on traditional looms with remarkable intricacy and skill. Carol became a friend, and Lao Textiles artisans were the very first artisans I worked with. They set the tone and the bar for what Zeri would eventually become.
The idea that germinated in Southeast Asia followed me home. Back in Kuwait, I found myself asking: what would it mean to do something similar for the Gulf, a place that had modernized so rapidly? The artisans who had shaped Gulf material culture - the weavers, the potters, and the dhow builders - were largely gone. What remained was often supported by charitable entities, producing crafts of average quality with little demand. The heritage was present in memory and museums, but not in daily life.
Modernizing Gulf heritage, I wrote at the time, is a bit like making an omelette without eggs. But I was convinced there was another way, not replication, but interpretation. Drawing on the intrinsic values underlying this heritage: a simple, understated aesthetic, functionality, natural materials, the geometry of Bedouin and architectural patterns. An approach that privileges quality over quantity, pure lines over flashy forms.
The name Zeri comes from the Persian word for gold - zar - and refers to the fine gold thread historically used to embroider women's thobes and men's bishts across the Gulf, India, and Iran. Originally made from real silver and gold leaf paper wrapped around thread, zeri embroidery is a mark of Gulf identity. The thread connects past to present. Just as zeri thread adds life to a black thobe, I wanted Zeri Crafts to breathe life into our craft heritage, with lightness, not weight.
Our first collection launched at Sadu House in Kuwait in May 2012: handwoven textiles made with Lao Textiles, inspired by the geometry of Sadu, and a modern mabkhara designed by Nedda El Asmar - an incense burner that brought beauty back to the ritual. In 2014 the mashrabiya mubkhar was exhibited at the Milano Triennale and the Design Flanders Gallery in Brussels. In 2016, the mashrabiya table, built by Afghan artisans, was shown at the Triennale's "Design after Design."
Over the years, the circle of artisans I work with has grown. Bertozzi came into my life the way the best things do: as a gift. Someone gave me one of their block-printed linens and I found it so beautiful that I went to visit them in Italy. What strikes you about Bertozzi's work is how simple it looks. It is not. The skill involved in what appears effortless is something I recognise from Lao Textiles, and from the best craft objects everywhere. We have been working together now for over ten years.
These relationships are at the heart of what Zeri is. They are not supplier arrangements, they are friendships built around a shared conviction that the objects we live with every day deserve to be made with care. When Covid came, I watched these workshops struggle: the looms quiet, the artisans at home, the orders gone. It reminded me that behind every object is a person, and that the thread connecting maker to user is more fragile than we think.
We are fortunate enough to have our showroom is a 1960s beach house in Kuwait. Until the early 1970s it overlooked the sea. In 1972 a highway was built; the sea disappeared, but the house remained. An outlier amid a strip of high-rises, cut off from the water but not from the memory of it.