News — Nomads

The most unexpected thing I learned in Thailand was something I already knew, but had forgotten. I noticed it wherever I went, whether it was a modern factory covering multiple city blocks, or a simple workshop in the forest. I had forgotten that human beings make the things I love most. In one place I saw dozens of women and men wearing identical blue shirts, heads down, face masks on, sanding, cutting, sawing, smoothing, packing the things we covet into boxes with big retail names stamped on them. The working conditions there are different from ours – these people were...

I’m home again after visiting a Thailand most of you will never see.    I’ve walked through forests of fallen logs and explored massive factories filled with people making the things we buy. I’ve photographed workshops, my ears bursting with the zzzzzzZZZZZZZ of chainsaws from which furniture takes it’s shape, and I’ve sat in suppliers’ offices and watched as everyone tap-tap-tapped away on calculators, searching for numbers on which they could agree. It was a crash course in Artemano, behind the scenes. I know now what it means to run a business that depends on one continent to feed the...

What if your friend told you that she had been offered a trip to Thailand by a brand that she loves. Would you hug her or “mistakenly” spill your latte on her overexcited head? Soon I will exchange the concrete jungle that is Montreal for the green jungles of Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand, to explore how Artemano creates furniture that reminds us so much of Elsewhere and makes our homes feel like the best kind of escape. And I understand if you want to pour your latte on my head, but before you do, consider this an...

I consider myself lucky because I started travelling at a young age. I visited Europe for the first time at the age of seven and I loved every minute of it. By taking me to different countries and exposing me to different cultures my parents instilled within me a love of travelling that I still have to this day. My curiosity, my craving to see and discover new places and peoples, pushed me to travel alone (as those of you who have read my “Beauty in Imperfection” post already know) to Florence, Italy at the age of nineteen.  That might...

I have a scar over my left eye and a chip in my front tooth that I’ve never bothered to fix, partly because I’m lazy, and partly because I believe our imperfections are as integral to who we are as the most perfect parts of ourselves. I know they’re not for everyone, so scars are also a way of filtering out people who care too much about perfection. So what draws me to Artemano’s pieces is what they are not. They are not overly manufactured. The wood is not overly tamed, smoothed, polished. It emanates Somewhere Else, and seems to...