Who we are
Craft of Origin is not a factory and not a warehouse. It does one narrow thing: buy from weaving households in one county of Guangxi, and answer — in English, in detail — the questions a buyer outside China usually cannot get answered.
Three hands before it reaches you. Diagram, not a photograph.
That sentence is longer than most people bother with, and that is rather the point. The usual version is three words on a swing tag — handwoven, sustainable, artisan — which can be printed anywhere by anyone and checked against nothing. Everything on this site exists to replace those adjectives with things you can verify.
There are two honest questions behind every wholesale enquiry we get: are these really from where you say, and will the second order match the first. Both are good questions. This page is the answer to both, including the parts that are not finished yet.
Why this site is mostly writing
Buying a woven basket from China is easy. Buying the right one, at a price you can resell, from material that will still look right in a dry room in February — that is the part that takes work, and almost none of it happens at the checkout.
Bobai is smaller than a province and bigger than a factory. Naming it means every claim here can be checked against anyone else selling from the same place.
Sun-drying takes 7 to 15 days; a kiln does it in one. Two pieces can look identical and differ by exactly that choice. We write the sequence down so you can tell which one you are buying.
Freight, duty and tax priced in before you decide, not discovered at the door. Nothing is added after the quote, because a surprise charge is how a first order becomes a last one.
Side by side
Both are common. One of them leaves you able to explain what you are selling, and to order it again.
What we aim to give you
The county, the plant by its proper name, and which steps it went through. If you can read it, you can compare it — against us, or against anyone else quoting you.
What the listing usually says
True of almost everything in the crate, useful about nothing. It tells you no more than the word natural on a food label, and it is printed by the same factories.
The price we quote
One number, quoted once, nothing added later. It is also why there is no price list here: the honest answer depends on where the box is going.
The price most people get first
Ex-works looks cheaper until the consignment lands. Around one in ten parcels sent with charges unpaid is refused at the door over an unexpected bill.
Batch differences, stated
Dried plant material shifts tone between harvests and between drying runs. We tell you that up front and group pieces into matched sets, rather than pretending the difference is a fault later.
Colour matched to a swatch
Promising identical pieces from a natural material means the natural ones get rejected. You pay for the sorting either way — the question is whether it is priced in or absorbed as waste.
Our side of the table
Finding someone in Bobai who will sell you a basket takes an afternoon. Finding someone who will sell you the same basket again in March takes longer. Three questions do most of the work.
Bamboo, maize sedge and seagrass behave differently in a room, and they are priced differently for a reason. A supplier who calls all three “straw” will treat them the same way in production too — and that shows up in the piece months later, not on the invoice.
Twenty pieces across three styles is how a first order should look, so nobody is guessing at demand or paying for stock that may never move. A supplier who only wants full containers is set up for a different buyer than ours.
We ask for the carton dimensions, the finished depth, whether it packs flat, how the material was dried and which HS code will be declared. “Yes, we can do that” to everything, with nothing measurable attached, is an answer about enthusiasm rather than capability.
Being straight with you
This is a young operation, and pretending otherwise would be the fastest way to lose you. So, plainly:
The mechanics of pricing are not a secret though — that is most of the how it's made page, and it is why we can tell you which step costs the money without telling you what anything costs us.
Straight answers
No. Weaving is done by households in Bobai, Guangxi, and selling it to shops, designers and studios outside China is our part: naming the place, writing the process down, holding the specification steady between orders, and getting it delivered. We are the buyer and the person who explains it, not the manufacturer.
It is independent and self-funded. No supplier pays to be listed here, nobody buys a placement, and there are no affiliate links on this site. That matters for one reason: nothing you read on these pages was written to sell someone else's stock.
We operate from Changsha in China, working with weaving households in Bobai County in the south-east of Guangxi. We sell first to the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and we take enquiries from anywhere else.
No. Nothing is sitting boxed up waiting for a buyer. Every piece is made to order, which means the weaving starts after your order is placed — production is 20 to 30 days, and shipping is another 7 to 10 days by air or 30 to 40 by sea.
Because size, weave density, quantity and destination all move the number, and a single generic price would either be a lie or a loss. Instead we ask you four things — what you want, how many, which city it is going to, and when you need it — and come back with one delivered price, freight, duty and tax included, within two working days.
Check us rather than believe us. Ask any supplier — including us — for the carton size, the finished depth, whether it packs flat, how the material was dried, and which HS code will be declared. Compare the answers in writing. A seller who cannot give those figures usually has not handled the goods.
Ask us. For a standing wholesale relationship we will arrange it. For a first enquiry we will tell you honestly what we can and cannot show you, because there is no point putting a trip between you and an answer you could have had by email.