DAR Enters the Atlas

This past month we received the dazzling news that a feature would be published about us in the very chic Cabana Magazine. This massive, biannual publication is a cornerstone of the interior design industry, and more importantly their Atlas of Craftsmanship has become one of the most thoughtful ongoing documents of global craft. Written by creative strategist Kristen Sullivan Caron, we’ve been thrilled to see DAR join the ranks of Rubelli, Percossi Papi and Tamiya Raden on the Atlas. Kristen has deep insight into the world of craft. She first reached us years ago, focusing her product design energies into our textile world at DAR, and became a natural ally - someone who really sees what we do.

To those of you reading here, have you been written about? Countless times we’ve tried to sum up all of what we do and never felt that we quite nailed it. Design-centered social enterprise preserving vanishing skills is…a mouthful. The simplest story behind it is that Mauricio & I met working with indigenous Shipibo artisans in the Amazon of Peru, now over 10 years ago, and found in each other a common passion towards understanding the core of what moves a culture. That first day, Mauricio arrived late (a story for another day) with an armful of books, historical texts and artifacts that he was curious to explore (immediately redeemed).

The story of our lives certainly seemed to change direction from that point onwards. After I continued my trade mission through Peru, Mauricio and I had planned to briefly reconnect at a reopening party at the impressive Amano textile museum - he was of course, friends with the owners and gave us an epic tour… Well. I ended up extending my trip and touring in and around the adventures of Lima with this most excellent of guides before flying back to Canada. In a sense it would be true to say ‘Little did we know that 10 years later, we would be sitting back and reflecting on how this all began’ with Kristen, but truthfully, thinking back on that spark, I suspect that it may have all been foretold.

Kristen has been a friend of the studio for a few years. We told her about our regular journey up into the northern Andes, to the mine outside San Pablo, on a road that turns to mud in the rainy season, isolating rural communities who already maintain a powerful hold on their own traditions. We told her about Coche Palomino, Victor and Riquelme, who have been carving these stones for longer than DAR has existed. We walked her through the process, where an artisan can spend two full days on the cutting of a single small cube, and how the design is the easy part. And the harder layers have been more practical: running a business on a road full of irregularities, and building a reliable network with rural artisans in a market that never sits still. The journey has not been for the faint of heart!

Reading the feature in Cabana, articulated by someone who arrived with a real gift for language, who listened carefully, and handed the whole thing back to us as a story, has been a nice moment for us. We've long shared the values driving our work and our love of design, but it's refreshing to see it reflected back to us so thoughtfully. What she did with those conversations surprised us.

I’ll link to the article below, but first I want to add that we loved how she opened the story with the drive up. With the road. She chose to begin with an experience instead of an explanation. Then she described the workshop as "a theatre of whirring steel, rushing water, and swishing sandpaper all performing in unison in the art of removing to create." What! A majestic way to describe what is a regular workday over here.

Read “A New Language for Peruvian Stone” on Cabana Magazine"