We started by
repairing things.

In 2014 there were two of us in a rented room in Bhaktapur, mending furniture that other workshops had turned away.

You learn a great deal about how something was made by taking it apart to fix it. Almost everything that fails, fails in the same few places: a glued joint that was never going to hold, a screw driven into end grain, a veneer over chipboard pretending to be timber.

So when we started making our own, we made the opposite. Mortise and tenon throughout. Timber bought standing and seasoned two years before it is cut. Oil rather than lacquer, because oil can be repaired in a living room and lacquer cannot.

Fourteen people work here now. Every piece carries the initials of whoever made it, which is partly pride and partly accountability — if something is wrong, we know exactly who to ask, and so do you.