Insights

Two streams of writing, for two different questions

One asks "is this what it claims to be, and what should it cost?" — that answer does not change much from year to year. The other asks "what is happening right now?" — that answer changes every quarter. They are written separately because they expire at different speeds.

Market

What is moving, right now

Export rules and quarantine, input prices, trade fair dates, and sourcing briefs on what is worth buying this season. Written when there is something worth saying, roughly every two weeks.

  • Policy & export — what changed, what it costs you
  • Materials & supply — raw lacquer, silk, bamboo
  • Trends — what Chinese institutional retail is buying
  • Sourcing briefs — the four things that set a price
Read Market →
Craft Notes

How to judge what you are offered

Evergreen: how to tell a hand-carved surface from a moulded one, what a genuine piece should cost, and what to ask a workshop before you pay a deposit. These stay useful for years.

  • Lacquer — hand-carved versus machine-pressed
  • Yunjin brocade — woven versus jacquard
  • Yixing clay — hand-built versus slip-cast
  • What to ask before a deposit
Read Craft Notes →

Why we publish at all. Our clients are buying craft they cannot see, from a country they may never visit. The only thing that makes that safe is knowing what to look for. These pages are what we would tell you on a call — written down so you can check our work, and so you can use it whether or not you ever hire us.

Latest

Start here

One from each stream. Both are the kind of thing a buyer asks in the first ten minutes of a call.

Have a question neither stream has answered?

Tell us what you are trying to work out. If other buyers are asking the same thing, we will write it up — and we will answer you directly either way.

Send a sourcing request