Craft Guides

A buyer's guide to alpaca knitwear and home textiles from Peru — micron grades, what baby alpaca really means, blends and mislabelling, pilling, moth control, and PTPA duty treatment

A buyer's guide to Beni Ourain, Azilal, Boucherouite and Hanbel — wool grades and the dead-wool problem, irregular sizing, vintage grading, fibre labelling, and pest treatment

A buyer's guide to celadon stoneware from Thailand and Vietnam — the crackle glaze, reduction firing, food-contact testing, defect grading, kiln economics, and packing

A buyer's guide to Luxor alabaster — why it is calcite not gypsum, translucency and wall thickness, fissures and breakage, lamp electrical certification, food-contact limits, and the antiquities red line

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

A buyer's guide to Cairo tentmaker appliqué — hand-stitched versus printed, stitch and edge quality, shrinkage and colourfastness, flammability for hospitality, and MOQ realities

A buyer's guide to Ghanaian powder-glass beads — how they are made, hole and size consistency, the recycled-glass lead question, strand versus kilo pricing, and jewellery compliance

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

A buyer's guide to Fes, Safi and Tamegroute pottery and Fes zellige tile — the lead glaze question on tagines and serving ware, frost resistance, size variation, and crate packing

A buyer's guide to papyrus — telling real papyrus from banana leaf, hand-painted versus printed, humidity and light damage, framing and packing, and how hand-painted work is classified

How to buy pashmina and cashmere in bulk — micron grades, GI and collective marks, fibre-content testing, blends, labelling law, and the shahtoosh red line

A buyer's guide to Anatolian kilims — slit-weave and sumak construction, wool and dye quality, vintage and patchwork stock, skew tolerance, fumigation, and HS 5702 classification