Craft Guides

Deep dives into individual crafts — materials, quality, MOQ, and buying tips.

Craft guides go material by material. Each takes a single craft — a rug, a glaze, a fibre, a carved stone — and explains how it is actually made, which differences in the making show up as differences in the finished piece, which flaws are inherent and which are defects, and what a buyer should specify, sample and inspect.

What each craft guide works through

The structure follows the object from raw material to carton:

  • Materials and grades — what the craft is made from, how grades are named in the trade, and where the naming is loose enough to mislead.
  • Construction and technique — the distinctions that change price and durability, and how to tell them apart in a sample.
  • Variation versus defect — what the process will always produce, and what should be rejected.
  • Specification — the fields to put in a purchase order so a workshop knows what you will accept.
  • Packing and transit — how the material fails in a container, and the packing that prevents it.

Compliance follows the material

The regulatory questions attached to a craft are usually a consequence of what it is made of rather than what it is for. Glazes raise food-contact and heavy-metal testing. Fibres raise content labelling and pest treatment. Timber and shell raise species and harvest documentation. Electrified items raise safety certification for the market they are sold in. Each craft guide names the questions its material triggers and points to the regulation guide that deals with them properly.

Written to be used at sample stage

These guides are most useful with a physical sample in front of you. They are deliberately concrete about what to look at — the back of the weave, the rim of the vessel, the joint, the hole through the bead — because that is where the difference between two quotations that look identical on paper becomes visible. Where a test needs a laboratory rather than a hand and an eye, the guide says so rather than implying you can judge it yourself.

What these guides will not tell you

Craft guides describe the craft, not any particular workshop's version of it. Techniques vary between clusters and between families within a cluster, and a maker who does something differently from the account here is not necessarily doing it wrong. Treat the guide as the vocabulary for a conversation with a supplier, and let the sample settle any disagreement.

Every craft guides article

Sourcing Peruvian Alpaca Textiles in Bulk

Buying Peruvian alpaca knitwear and home textiles in bulk: micron grades, what baby alpaca really means, blend labelling, pilling and moth control.

Sourcing Moroccan Berber Rugs in Bulk

Beni Ourain, Azilal, Boucherouite and Hanbel explained for bulk buyers: wool grades, irregular sizing, vintage grading, fibre labelling and pest treatment.

Sourcing Thai Celadon Glazeware in Bulk

Buying celadon stoneware from Thailand and Vietnam: the crackle glaze, reduction firing, food-contact testing, defect grading, kiln economics and packing.

Sourcing Egyptian Alabaster Carving in Bulk

Buying Luxor alabaster in bulk: why it is calcite not gypsum, translucency and wall thickness, fissures, lamp certification and the antiquities red line.

Sourcing Kente Cloth from Ghana: A Buyer's Guide

Buying woven kente in bulk — Asante and Ewe traditions, strip weaving economics, yarn choices, woven versus printed kente, quality checks, and cultural attribution

Sourcing Khayamiya Appliqué Textiles from Egypt

Buying Cairo tentmaker appliqué in bulk: hand-stitched versus printed, stitch and edge quality, shrinkage, colourfastness, flammability and MOQ realities.

Sourcing Krobo Recycled Glass Beads from Ghana

Buying Ghanaian powder-glass beads: how they are made, hole and size consistency, the recycled-glass question, strand versus kilo pricing and compliance.

Sourcing Maasai Beadwork in Bulk: A Buyer's Guide

Buying Kenyan and Tanzanian beadwork at wholesale — bead types, colour meaning, pricing by bead count, cultural attribution, and lead, cadmium, and nickel compliance

Sourcing Moroccan Ceramics and Zellige in Bulk

Fes, Safi and Tamegroute pottery and Fes zellige explained: the lead glaze question on serving ware, frost resistance, size variation and crate packing.

Sourcing Egyptian Papyrus Art in Bulk

Buying papyrus in bulk: telling real papyrus from banana leaf, hand-painted versus printed, humidity and light damage, framing, packing and classification.

Pashmina and Cashmere: A Bulk Buyer's Guide

Buying pashmina and cashmere in bulk: micron grades, collective marks, fibre-content testing, blends, labelling law and the shahtoosh red line.

Sourcing Turkish Kilim and Flatweave Rugs in Bulk

Buying Anatolian kilims in bulk: slit-weave and sumak construction, wool and dye quality, vintage and patchwork stock, skew tolerance and fumigation.

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