The Short List: 9 Beautiful Ways to Bring Handcraft into the Home

The beloved atelier Casamidy—the brainchild of partners Anne-Marie Midy and Jorge Almada—produces all its furniture and lighting designs in Mexico’s San Miguel de Allende, a town long known for its exceptional crafts traditions. The exuberant Hacienda Headboard is made of hand-hammered tin.

Since 2011, Spanish designer Alvaro Catalán de Ocón has been working with traditional weaving communities around the world to fashion post-consumer plastic bottles into stylish lamps. The latest model of his PET Lamp (PET stands for polyethylene terephthalate, and is the plastics industry’s shorthand for the material) is the Bolgatanga, an undulating statement-making pendant of straw and elephant grass woven around a plastic-bottle base by master basket makers in northern Ghana.

With its graphic floral pattern hand-embroidered in India on linen with yarn, the Marguerite Pillow by Schumacher is a modern take on folk.

The Charleston-based boutique brand Ibu is on a mission to empower female artisans across the globe and get their gorgeous goods into clients’ hands. The White Beaded Bowl is hand-stitched with glass beads on sisal in Rwanda.

Direct-to-consumer e-commerce company The Citizenry identifies skilled craftspeople all around the world—Ireland, Argentina, Vietnam and more—and then works with them to produce original goods informed by local traditions. The Lombok Rattan Lounge Chair is crafted entirely by hand on the Indonesian island of Java.

With an unshakable thirst for adventure and an unerring eye for the chic, Laura Aviva has built L’Aviva Home on a sought-after, tightly edited collection of contemporary products manufactured by craft communities with age-old methods. Hand pierced with tiny dots in an Egyptian workshop, her Cairo Pendant filters the light in an alluring way.

California couple Courtney and Laren Poole founded Rose & Fitzgerald while living in East Africa and being dazzled by the work of local artisans. These Ankole Horn Serving Spoons are carved in Uganda from ethically sourced cow horn.

The Italian author, gardener and all-around Renaissance man Umberto Pasti founded the workshop Now on the Ocean in a rural village in northern Morocco to connect local workers with a sustainable, viable trade. Shepherds-turned-craftsmen build enchanting pieces inspired by rustic 18^th-century English furniture, such as this settee.

The Iantha rug by design maestro Thomas O’Brien for PFM—hand-hooked in Nepal by master artisans—is the perfect union of contemporary sophistication and humble craft.