Kigali, Rwanda. Since 2019
Objects made slowly, for schools that stay lived in.
A workshop of nine in Nyarutarama. We cut, turn, throw and weave under one roof, and nothing leaves the bench until one of us can take it apart by hand.
Four piecesWork
In production this season
Nyira Stool
- Material
- Fig wood, oil and beeswax
- Size
- 340 by 460 mm
- Year
- 2021
Three legs, splayed six degrees, wedged through a solid seat. No screws anywhere in it. The wedges swell with the wood, so it tightens as it ages.
Kivu Vessels
- Material
- Volcanic clay, ash glaze
- Size
- 232 by 265 mm
- Year
- 2023
Thrown from clay dug in the Musanze foothills and glazed with ash from our own offcuts. The colour is whatever the wood was that month.
Musanze Vase
- Material
- Stoneware, left unglazed
- Size
- 210 by 240 mm
- Year
- 2025
Turned in two halves and joined at the belly, so the seam runs where the light breaks. Unglazed outside. It takes a mark and keeps it.
Isaro Cloth
- Material
- Handspun sisal, madder dye
- Size
- 860 by 1060 mm
- Year
- 2024
Sisal spun in Bugesera and dyed with madder root. Two bands of doubled weft mark where the loom was rewarped. We leave the seam showing.
Studio
We started because a bench broke and nobody could fix it. It had been glued where it should have been joined, and the only honest repair was a new bench.
So the rule is narrow, and it has not changed. Nothing leaves the workshop unless one of us can take it apart on a Tuesday afternoon with hand tools and put it back together by five. It rules out most adhesives, every hidden fastener, and roughly two thirds of the shapes a client will ask for.
What is left is slower and costs more. We make about four hundred pieces a year rather than four thousand. Every one of them has a drawing on file, a log number, and a maker who will answer the phone.
- Makers at the bench
- 9
- Pieces a year
- 400
- Years open
- 7
- Repairs, for life
- Free
Visit
Come and sit on something.
No appointment and no showroom. You will be handed a cup of tea and left alone with the work for as long as you like.
- Address
- KK 14 Ave, Nyarutarama
Kigali, Rwanda - Hours
- Tuesday to Saturday
09.00 until 17.00 - Telephone
- +250 788 000 114