Our story
A small shop with a short supply chain
Karaf started from a simple frustration: Tunisian craft is extraordinary, and almost all of it reaches Europe anonymously — stripped of the region it came from and the name of the person who made it.
So we do it the slow way. We travel, we buy a handful of pieces at a time, and we keep the maker's name attached to the thing they made. It means the shop is never full and the collection is never the same twice. It also means that when you ask about a carpet, we can tell you who knotted it and roughly how long it took.
A carpet from Kairouan is four months of someone's life. It should not arrive here as “Rug, red, large”.
The ceramics come from two very different traditions. Nabeul is a wheel-and-glaze town with Andalusian and Ottoman pattern in its bones. Sejnane is the opposite: coil-built, sun-dried, pit-fired by women working a technique that predates the wheel entirely, and that UNESCO listed as intangible heritage in 2018.
How it works
From the loom to the Sleepstraat
- 01
We go there
Two or three trips a year to Kairouan, Tozeur, Nabeul and Sejnane. No agents, no containers of stock chosen from a catalogue.
- 02
We buy the piece, not the line
Everything is bought individually from the weaver or the potter, at a price agreed with them. Nothing is reordered.
- 03
It comes to Ghent
Pieces are cleaned, checked and photographed here before they go on the floor. What you see in the shop is what there is.
Questions about a piece or a trip?
We are happy to talk through a weave, a region, or what we might be able to find for you on the next trip.
Email us about thishello@karaf.be