Patan 1978 · Sydney today
हाम्रो कथा
A shop that beganwith one loom.
Three generations in: a family of makers in Patan, and a studio in Sydney that brings what they make to people who intend to wear it rather than keep it in a box: cloth off the hill looms, and gold off the bench in Patan.
The founder
She counted threadsrather than customers.
Kamala learned to weave from her mother-in-law in the year she was married, on a loom that is still standing in the back room of the shop. She wove patuka first, then dhaka panels, then whole saris.
Her rule was simple and slightly maddening to run a business by: never sell a piece you would not be willing to wear to your own daughter’s wedding. We have kept it, and it is the reason our collection is small.
She died in 2019. Her loom has not been sold and will not be. Her granddaughter runs this shop from a studio in Sydney, eight and a half thousand kilometres away, by the same rule.
How we got here
यात्रा
Four moments
1978
A single loom off Kumbheshwar Marg
Kamala Maharjan begins weaving patuka sashes for neighbours in a room behind the family house in Patan. She sells them from a mat outside the temple on festival days.
1994
The dhaka road to Palpa
Her son takes the two-day bus to Palpa to buy dhaka directly from the weavers rather than through Kathmandu traders. Those families are still with us, and the cloth returns to the shop when the next collection is ready.
2011
A granddaughter lands in Sydney
Maya arrives to study, and spends four years listening to Nepali friends complain that getting a proper tilhari in Australia means waiting a month for a parcel or asking someone to carry one back in hand luggage.
Today
Four workshops, one Sydney studio
We buy from the weaving households of Palpa and Bhaktapur and four goldsmithing families in Patan, and hold every piece here in Sydney, so it reaches you in two hours, not four weeks.
What we hold to
हाम्रा मान्यता
Three rules
Inherited from the founder, and inconvenient often enough that we know we are keeping them.
हातले
By hand, or not at all
Hand-raised, hand-set, hand-strung. If a piece can only be made economically by machine, we do not sell it.
इमान्दारी
Honest about the price
We tell you what the maker was paid. It is usually between three and four times the going rate, and it is why we are not the cheapest shop in Patan.
परम्परा
Tradition, not costume
These are pieces for wearing, to the temple, the wedding, the Teej hall. We keep the forms our grandmothers wore and make them for the way people live now.
छिटो
No shop, on purpose
A retail lease in Sydney would come out of the makers' margin. Online only, shipped from our own studio, is what lets us pay Nepal properly and still reach you in two hours.