If tools are extensions of our hands, then workshops are extensions of our homes.

For most of the artisans we work with, this is literally the case: workshops are built in garages or as extensions of their existing homes. Over time, these workshops revealed themselves not only as spaces for making but also of “everyday resistance” (borrowed from the words of James C. Scott) where we are forced to confront the questions of authority and autonomy, whether in the form of state-imposed controls on what craftspeople can make or improving on existing technology to keep up with new demands.

We realised that traditional craft artisans had been grappling with humanity’s relationships with machines and nature long before questions surrounding these started gaining traction in the media. The social history of craftsmanship has a complex and enduring trace of resistances, much of which has been woven into our material culture of today.

The forms of everyday resistance practised by a dwindling but steadfast number of craftspeople in Malaysia was the starting point for our debut collection. We tapped into the archives and immersed ourselves in the quiet dialogue between the head, the hands, and the tools.

We searched for inspiration in our everyday surroundings, just like the craftspeople before us did. In the process, we navigated the wide and ambiguous spectrum of human experience in making — between acts of creation and destruction, powers of the individual and the collective, between perfection and imperfection, the eternal and the temporal, the old and the new, tradition and modernity, the country and the city.

We resist, we conform, we resist!