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Alejandro Gomez-Meade
Role
Creative director, filmmaker, photographer & editor
Deliverables
Artisan film series & photography

Sanyork Fair Trade – stories of the artisans behind the art

Sanyork Fair Trade came to me with a problem: the handmade pieces it sold online were being copied, mass-produced and sold for less, cutting into its business and driving its artisans to leave their craft. Every piece is made by hand, with skills passed down through families for generations. A mass-produced copy has no maker, and a fair trade label has no story. A handmade work of art has both, and its value is unique and lives in the hands that made it. I set out on a mission to preserve their individual stories, so they could live alongside the art Sanyork sells.

Nine films shot over three weeks in six cities, featured on Sanyork's website since 2015, giving a voice to the makers behind every piece and the future generations that follow.

In depth

Making the art

Making the art

The people before the pieces. Each film lets one artisan tell their own story. Where the craft came from. Who taught them. And why they kept going.

Passing it down

Passing it down

Every craft is a family business. And through generations, one father throws the pottery, and his daughters paint it. A widow finds meaning in continuing her husband's work with leather. A son prefers the independence of working with his father, making alpaca rugs.

Mabel’s grandmother, in a wide-brimmed hat and a plaid shawl, knitting white yarn by a green doorway

Three generations of finger-puppet makers. Mabel's family has added their own touch to the craft they inherited.

A woman in a brown knitted cardigan laughing as she knits
A smiling young woman in a straw hat sitting in a doorway, holding up a knitted orange lion finger puppet
“The art I carry in my blood. It started with my grandparents, then my parents, myself and my kids too.”
Cirilo, gourd carver
Making it their own

Making it their own

Every story shares a common thread, with each generation carrying on the tradition and evolving it through their own artistic vision. One maker took up Colca embroidery when few people knew it, and now stitches it into purses and bags. The craft never stands still: it keeps improving, with its cultural and generational roots as the foundation.

Pacompilla pinning a pelt flat on a wooden workbench between brick walls, Sanyork Fair Trade
Embroidered coin purse and patches in red and green on a wooden sewing-machine table, a Singer machine behind
Close-up of Mabel’s grandmother’s hands knitting white yarn on wooden needles
Silverio Wanka’s son tries a set of cane panpipes in his workshop, cut cane stacked beside him
Potter José Yaksa shapes a small bowl at his wheel in his brick workshop
An artisan at a workbench painting a small gourd drum with a fine brush, a pile of painted drums in front of him and shelves of paint pots behind
Cispe plays a cane flute he made, cut cane tubes on the bench beside him
A weaver seen through the threads of a floor loom, a striped rug taking shape
Never dies

Never dies

Mass production undercuts the artisans' work, and every generation faces the risk of abandoning the art. Some walk away; some come back. As José Yaksa puts it: “Crafts will never die. We'll just transform them.”

Hundreds of tiny handmade worry dolls in colored hats heaped on purple cloth
Carved and burned gourds shaped as owls on a workbench by a sunlit window
Where it lives on

Where it lives on

A decade later, the films still play on Sanyork's store. They give a voice to the art before the transaction. Every piece now shows its artisan, and the fair trade label has its story.

A MacBook on a sofa under a knitted throw, showing Sanyork Fair Trade's alpaca blankets page with the film of Pacompilla working alpaca fur