Nepal has always been famous for its craftsmanship. With the Newars of Kathmandu Valley excelling at metalworking, and wood and stone carving, examples are all around us, enriching our daily experience. With the advent of young designers who are taking that natural affinity for high quality craftsmanship, and adding the modern element of design, the local marketplace now provides the discerning consumer with ethically sourced, fair trade oriented, carefully designed products like jewellery (AAMO), apparel made from natural fibre (drichu and Stemp), wood carved memory games impressed with traditional iconography (allaré), coffee-based cosmetics (Karma Coffee), high-end stationary (Bhav), classic heirloom quality handmade leather bags (Tissah), and other unique, carefully crafted items such as wooden bowls that are carved by the nomadic

Raute people (sourced by KOLPA)—items which would never have been available without the careful, sometimes arduous process that the founders of these design establishments have grappled with to bring their distinctive, thoughtfully designed items to the world.

Nayantara Gurung Kakshapati co-founded the Art Market (which occurs on the first Saturday of every month) at the Yellow House at the beginning of 2015 with Marie Ange Holmgren-Sylvain, the director of Image Ark gallery in Patan. It was during these Art Markets that she became associated with Nepali designers like Bhintuna Jyapoo who founded Bhav Products two years ago, a cool, practical creative stationary brand, along with graphic designer Aaayusha Shrestha whose AAMO line consists of exquisite jewellery made by Newar artisans in Patan.

Understanding that infrastructure and visibility are a must for budding small businesses; Kakshapati is helping to curate and showcase Nepali design at the One Tree Shop which is at the entrance of Sam’s One Tree Café—previously the long running Nanglo restaurant at Durbar Marg. The aforementioned eight designers are the first to be exhibiting their products, which will rotate every few months so that other such designers and endeavours can have a similar spotlight shone on their extremely creative ventures.

Design is all very well, and, if executed as it should, can produce a blend of functionality and beauty that is sublime. With the products currently on show at One Tree Café though, there is the extra dimension of social responsibility and sustainability.

It was particularly striking that of the designers that I spoke to, many, like Birgit Lienhart-Gyawali (Birgit is Austrian married to a Nepali) of Karma Coffee and Aayusha Shrestha of AAMO had both worked in the Development sector, but had opted out to pursue these design ventures that have strong roots in supporting communities at grass-roots level. Lienhart-Gyawali’s Karma coffee works and collaborates with families who are small coffee producers in Kaski, Sindhupalchowk, Syangja, and Ilam, and her café in Patan provides coffee made specifically by these producers. Karma Coffee also up-cycles coffee based products such as soap or face-scrub and package them for the buyer; it is the communities who benefit directly from the sales.

Aayusha Shrestha also discarded a career in Development, went to Kathmandu University to pursue a degree in Graphic Design, and researched the capacities of traditional metalworkers in Patan, and labors with the artisans to create

her jewellery designs that are all extrapolated from the abilities and the potential she saw in the workers that she researched.

Creating these businesses and working towards sustainability required ingenuity, evolution, endurance, and a certain understanding too, of how things work in Nepal. Bhintuna Jyapoo, and Aayusha Shrestha speak of the initial intransigence and reluctance with which the jewelry makers and stationary makers viewed their “new” pieces. The artisans claimed that these objects couldn’t be made, but the two women persevered, sticking to their work, and explaining their designs as best as they could, resulting in rewarding collaborations that have taught traditional craftspeople how to use existing methods and make things afresh; a process which was initially viewed with suspicion is now delightful to the makers who now anticipate making the new designs with a measure of glee.

The heart of a sustainable small business is creating both satisfied workers and customers. Paying craftspeople their due, and helping them to evolve by teaching them how to solve problem or “upskill” their existing affinities and talents (a basic rule that is often skipped in international development where livelihood skills can be forced upon communities who do not care for an external force that turns up and tries to teach them how to say, knit or weave without providing any link to the market place where they may then sell their products) creates a viable environment where both parties are happy, with the rights of the worker remaining intact, justifying the design of the end product.

The products created by Tissah, allaré, KOLPO, and Stemp create a new kind of focus on all that is special in Nepali craft. The creativity of the young minds behind these brands has brought a much needed evolution from the older traditional crafts into a newer, more environmentally and socially aware culture where the discriminating customer wants to know the story behind the product, and how a wooden cutting board, which may cost more than one you can purchase in Bhatbhatini, may be worthwhile because of the contribution you are making to a community who excel at such craftsmanship but may never have seen their products appreciated without the intermediary visionary that is the designer.

Nepal is poor, being employed is a blessing, but with the beginning of sustainable design ventures such as these, there is now a future for those craftspeople who might otherwise have melted away with time, and who can now move into the future continuing to wield their craft ever better guided by the sure hand of these young, strong minded Nepali and Newar designers who have taken the old and made it anew.