Meet the Makers: An Around-the-World Tour of Handmade Goods
An international lineup of unique wares is at your fingertips — it’s all a matter of knowing the right Airbnb hosts.
From an eight-person farm near Medellín where coffee is handpicked and sun dried to a kaftan-making workshop in Johannesburg, creative communities are reviving traditions and pushing boundaries all over the world. Read on to meet the makers, and spark your own creativity. As we become ever more reliant on digital devices, the simple act of unplugging and making something with your hands has become all the more restorative — and necessary.
MADE IN…Medellín
Coffee with Elizabeth Cruz and Esteban Monzon
For Elizabeth Cruz and Esteban Monzon, coffee is in their veins. The married couple heads up coffee farm La Casa Grande, and they learned the business through Monzon’s family, which has been planting, harvesting, and processing arabica beans for seven generations.
Colombia is well known as one of the world’s coffee capitals, but Medellín’s mountainous landscape poses a challenge when it comes to picking coffee: No machines can be used to harvest on the steep slopes. “Coffee is actually a fruit,” explains Cruz. “We peel the cherries, and there are two or three beans inside. We pick the cherries by hand because we only want the ripe ones.”
Their business is centered at a restored 19th-century hacienda roughly 25 minutes outside Medellín. The two-story building has high ceilings and slanted balconies well suited for sun-drying beans. “Some big coffee farmers [dry beans] with electricity or fire,” says Cruz, referring to methods that can have turnaround windows as brief as 24 hours. “But we don’t believe in that. We think the process has to take its time.” Sun-drying, Cruz and Monzon’s preferred method, can take up to three months. In addition, they carefully monitor the soil, weather, and flora conditions around the coffee plants to create the ideal environment for their blend, which has hints of orange and citronella.
La Casa Grande is not a behemoth operation — just eight employees keep it running — but Cruz and Monzon aim to share their livelihood with others. They welcome visitors with a tour that walks them through the entire farming process. “For many years it was secret and hidden,” says Cruz of the campo. “Now that we have a new Medellín, we are finally open to customers. Not only tourists, but Colombians, too.” — Nneka M. Okona
Maker intel: Over 560,000 families in Colombia run small coffee farms like the Monzons’. The National Federation of Coffee Growers of Columbia offers pointers on subjects like where to buy 100% Colombian coffee and nailing your java-to-water ratio (two teaspoons coffee to eight ounces water).
MADE IN…Rome
Mosaics with Giuliana Cassio and Sara Gozzaldi
It’s not uncommon to see tourists in Rome’s basilicas craning their necks to view the glittering mosaics overhead. But this isn’t the best way to appreciate them, insists Giuliana Cassio. “You have to get close up.” She’s part of the team at Studio Cassio, a mosaic workshop with a 200-year-old family legacy that includes work on sites like the Vatican. Cassio isn’t advocating toting a ladder for your mosaic-peeping. With colleague Sara Gozzaldi, she hosts an Airbnb Experience during which guests can create the tiled masterpieces. “This is not a touristic class,” says Gozzaldi. “They learn professional mosaic making.”
The city is, naturally, ground zero for classical Roman mosaics, but it’s also rich with Byzantine and Renaissance examples, so visitors can see how techniques evolved. “The ancient Romans were breaking marble with a hammer. By the time St. Peter’s was being built, you get micro-mosaics, a completely different style, with glass in 23,000 colors,” says Cassio. “That’s how we work: We start by making glass threads in an 800-degree flame. Because of our history with the Vatican, we have all the original ‘recipes.’” — Lesley Porcelli
Maker intel: Though the most well-known Roman mosaics are decorative, many were functional, too. In Ostia Antica, threshold mosaics served as storefront signs: a barrel for a wine shop, a fish for a fishmonger, a lighthouse for the port, an elephant for a trader of African goods.
Tile Tracking: A Mosaic Hunter’s Guide to Rome
Going slightly off the beaten path will yield huge rewards, in the form of millions of tiny tesserae.
Centrale Montemartini: Housed in a former power plant, this unassuming museum displays antiquities against a 20th-century industrial backdrop. “It’s a very charming place full of ancient Roman statues and mosaics,” says Cassio. “They have micro-mosaics — it’s pretty rare to see them so closely and not very protected.”
Ostia Antica: This seaside town, just 30 minutes by train from the city center, is remarkably preserved due to being covered in silt after the fall of Rome. Here you’ll find intricate wall and floor mosaics in the ancient forum and bathhouse, and even right on the streets.
Santa Prassede: This ninth-century basilica is “full of small chapels where you can see Byzantine mosaics very, very close,” says Cassio.
Basilica San Clemente: A fascinating structure in its own right (a basilica built in the early 1100s on top of a fourth-century basilica, which itself was built on top of a first-century nobleman’s residence), San Clemente also features a spectacularly detailed gilded Byzantine mosaic on its apse.
MADE IN…Tokyo
Incense with Mio Salam
In Japan, incense is an everyday fixture. But the art behind the aromatic — particularly the traditional variety, which arrived more than 14 centuries ago — is lesser known and sacred to insiders. That’s why Mio Salam, an incense specialist born and raised in Tokyo, convinced an expert to tutor her in the closely guarded craft. “I found a master who was selling incense materials and asked him to teach me the secret method,” she explains. Impressed by her passion for the subject, he obliged. “I was so grateful to learn,” she remembers. “I’m still in contact with him and get advice from him whenever I need it.”
Salam was familiar with the fragrance and ambience of incense — growing up, she had smelled it in the home of her grandmother, who burned it daily. “It brought me a sense of reassurance,” she says. As an adult, she cultivated her expertise over six months of intensive training. Some of the curriculum focused on the long history of regional incense. Introduced to Japan via China in the sixth century, it’s since been used for various ceremonies and rituals. (Samurai even burned incense to center themselves before battle.) But for Salam, the most memorable part of the training wasn’t the textbook material — it was a piece of wisdom the scent master left with her. “He told me, ‘Incense connects people,’” she says.
By 2004, Salam was a master herself, teaching a course on incense at a university extension center. (To her knowledge, she was the first person in Japan to teach such a class.) “Students are always impressed that they’re able to make incense by themselves,” she says. She continues to teach courses at universities and cultural centers, as well as recreational workshops like the one she offers through Airbnb. Much of her instruction focuses on the curation of 20 raw ingredients (sandalwood and agarwood are staples). A focus on natural ingredients sets traditional Japanese incense apart in an age when mass-produced incense sticks and many other scented products are made with synthetics, Salam says. “Natural, pure ingredients make you relax when you smell them,” she adds.
“I’d like my guests to feel peace through making incense.” — Experience Host Mio Salam
Relaxation is a major benefit for Salam, who continues her grandmother’s tradition of lighting incense daily. “When I want to connect with myself, make my mind calm, and stop being swayed by information from outside, I light incense,” she says. Now she finds enthusiastic students approaching her with hopes of learning the craft, much like she did with her instructor almost 20 years ago. “I want to share it with as many people as possible,” she says. “I’d like my guests to feel peace through making incense.” — Rachel Mosely
MADE IN… Mexico City
Traditional textiles with Anabel Torres Chávez
Puebla native Anabel Torres Chávez learned how to weave on European looms while studying fashion design and textile art in Barcelona. Then she asked herself why she was training so far from her home, which had its own venerable heritage in the craft. She returned to Mexico to learn indigenous weaving techniques from artisans in Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Tabasco. “In ancient times, Mexicans believed the only way to achieve happiness was to always be connected to nature, including what you wore,” explains Chávez. “So materials, colors, and motifs came from nature.”
After a year of learning on the road, she settled in Mexico City. Today, she teaches a weaving class in the city’s historic park Chapultepec Forest. In the capital, Chávez can introduce the tradition to travelers who may not be able to explore rural communities, and foster greater appreciation for the art. “I emphasize all the work it takes, from spinning and dyeing to using a backstrap loom,” she says. “Often crafts sold in Mexico are really inexpensive. Once people realize how hard it is to make something, I think they value it more.” — Brooke Porter Katz
Maker intel: Among a wave of Mexico City designers honoring the country’s textile heritage are Carla Fernández, who partners with rural artisans on ready-to-wear designs, and Arudeko, a home goods label run by two sisters who collaborate with Oaxacan crafters.
MADE IN…Johannesburg
Kaftans with Victoria Adasonla
It’s no wonder that the lightweight, vented robes known as kaftans are wardrobe staples in the Middle East, North Africa, and West Africa — they’re a freeing option in a sweltering climate. For Johannesburg-based Victoria Adasonla, the garment represented greater economic freedom, as well. A longtime entrepreneur (as a teen, she sold wholesale clothes and jewelry at a profit), she was pregnant with her second child when she began finding the city’s 9-to-5 culture limiting. “I like to be independent,” she says. Knowing the level of empowerment that side gigs could provide, she founded Woman with a Mission, a nonprofit that encourages entrepreneurship among South African women. The fashion-lover launched her own kaftan-making workshop as part of the initiative, where guests create kaftans out of traditional fabrics and embellish them with beads and other accoutrements.
The kaftan is in some ways indicative of a shift toward a more African identity after decades of westernization and apartheid. While popular in West Africa, the garment hasn’t yet reached the same level of prevalence in Johannesburg. “Only on Heritage Day do you see people really wearing African fabric,” Adasonla says, referencing the September holiday celebrating South Africa’s multiculturalism. But that’s changing. Apartheid “really took away the local culture,” she adds. “It encouraged Western styles. People have seen the need to revive African styles and prints. Now we’re championing them as proper fashion.”
Though West African prints and fabrics like ankara dominate, South Africans are making kaftans their own with motifs like the Swaziland shield or the country’s Big Five game animals. “Now when you watch the news you’ll see the female politicians in African fabric,” Adasonla says. “Kaftans included.” — Anthonia Akitunde
Maker intel: Ankara, the bright cotton material also known as wax print, is one of many fabrics popular for African kaftans (including those in Adasonla’s workshop). Other kaftan-friendly textiles include adire, an indigo-dyed Yoruba cloth, and kente, a Ghanaian fabric known globally for its bold patterns.
Global Garb: Keeping Up with the Kaftan
This garment’s logged major miles since its origins in Mesopotamia. Below, a sampling of regional and historical varieties.
Ottoman Empire: Ottoman royalty favored the kaftan so much that some sultans would triple-layer them in order to show off as many expensive fabrics and embellishments as possible. Today, a collection of some 1,000 kaftans is housed at Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace.
Senegal: The boubou, a Wolof spin on a kaftan, has roots in Senegal, but it’s also popular in Nigeria, Ghana, and other areas of West Africa. Men’s boubous are often worn over loose pants with a matching cap, while women’s styles are often paired with bright, elaborately wrapped turbans.
Morocco: Traditionally, kaftans have been women’s wear in Morocco — vibrant, embellished versions are a frequent pick for brides. But the djellaba, a similar cloak common in Morocco and much of North Africa, is worn by both men and women.
Tanzania: Many Swahili Muslims in Tanzania and other parts of East Africa wear the kanzu, a long white tunic that resembles the kaftan. Part of an ensemble that might include trousers or kikoi (sarong-style bottoms) and a kofia (a round, flat-topped cap), the kanzu is conventionally worn on Fridays for religious ceremonies.
