The secret behind our Let’s Pause craftsmen is in their hands

At Let’s Pause we value those hands greatly. Their ability to work materials is what we fell in love with originally. This is an homage to our craftsmen and women: their passion for all things natural, and their work that keeps age-old techniques that would otherwise disappear, alive and well.

At Let’s Pause we really enjoy observing how these craftsmen ply their trade. These men and women who we have met along our journey, lovers of all things naturally made, made by hand and who now part of our family.

We love seeing how they lose themselves in creating their work. It’s almost hypnotic to see the knowing movement of their hands; The speed and the precision, the dexterity, repeated gestures, to and fro, again and again.

Seeing how they select their raw materials; how this is then transformed in the creation of objects that look exactly the same but are nevertheless all different because that is precisely what is magical about the handmade.

Each movement maintains the traditions.

Each piece is part of nature. Everything is done with great care and attention through techniques that are passed down from generation to generation locally. Everyone is caught up in the same passion as we are in the way natural materials are used: cane, esparto, couro and palm leaf…. In many instances including up-cycling and re-using waste materials that Mother Nature no longer has any use for within these very localities.

Beauty and commitment to the planet.

All sharing in the love of their work and the pieces that are produced through it: not only because it keeps the flame of these ancestral ways from their grand-parents or even great-grand-parents alive: but also because their labour is dedicated to creating beautiful things for our homes, through looking after and respecting our planet and its resources.

Craftsmen and women making a name: from here….

Like the designer Ceci Ferrero who came up with the Couro collection at her studio in Vall d’En Bas. Leather from vegetable sources made from the American palm leaf that is collected after the tree blooms, when the leaf no longer serves any purpose it falls to the ground. Let’s Pause works to include these materials within its design collections, materials that have never been used in this way before.

And there: Colombia, Morocco…

In Colombia our craftswomen are specialists in weaving fique fibres, a material taken from a variety of the Agave plant that is particularly fibrous and with which we make lamps, rugs and headboards.

And then there is Albeiro Camargo who is responsible for the Albeira hammock, weaving fique fibres in a unique knot-free technique to provide for maximum comfort. Albeiro always manages to surprise us with his pieces just using vegetable fibres.

Not forgetting Joaquín Blanco who made this chocolate whisk from the fruit of the Magnolia tree that is indigenous to his locality, within the Colombian rainforest.

In Morocco our craftsmen work with fibrous plants that grow wild in the landscape, working with different techniques: woven palm leaf, rope made from palm leaf, stools with woven seating, cane lamps, chairs in oleander timber, poplar wood sourced from the cut-off branches that allow the trees to grow faster in commercial forests. A never-ending list of materials and techniques!

To all of our talented friends we want to say a big thanks! And let them know how much we appreciate their art and their techniques.

How about you? Would you like to welcome their work into your home?

YES, I’D LIKE TO PUT ONE OF THEIR PIECES INTO MY HOME

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