About Us

"Everything in our fair trade gift collection has been personally selected, commissioned and purchased directly from the artist or craftsman at source in the country of origin. Any item purchased here will result in a repeat order that will directly benefit the person who created it." Fred and Maureen Wilkinson.

The Fair Trade Gift Shop is the online retail branch of World Art & Crafts Ltd., specialist fair trade importers, retailers and wholesalers of decorative and ethnic handicrafts since 1988. All the products on this website have been sourced and supplied by World Art & Crafts and are 100% fair trade. World Art & Crafts are certified importers and suppliers to BAFTS the British Association of Fair Trade Shops.

Our Products: We specialize in fair trade decorative and ethnic art & crafts, mainly wood carvings (especially animals), but also baskets and boxes, bags and purses, jewellery, metal ornaments, paper products, carved pencils, magnets and key rings, handmade ceramics, drums and musical instruments, masks, Buddhas and traditional, ritual and ceremonial items. Our degrees in fine art, plus the experience gleaned over the years, enable us to recognise and appreciate the various art and crafts processes and to select, commission and purchase only the finest quality work. Some of our finds are one-off creations, the work of individual painters, carvers or weavers - while others are the products of family co-operatives and small cottage industries. Unlike many commercial importers we have a genuine interest in art and culture, and take the time to learn about the origin, function and meaning of the individual pieces we buy.

Most of our products are currently made to order in South East Asia, in particular Indonesia, where we have made over 40 buying trips, but we also buy in India and Nepal, Peru and the Amazon, and occasionally Bolivia, China and Thailand. We make several major buying trips each year in search of new stock, and to maintain both the quality and continuity of our current range.

Fair Trade: We were among the first in the UK to operate a fair trade policy, with everything personally selected and commissioned directly from the artist or craftsperson at source in the country of origin since 1988. We work very closely with all our suppliers, and try to visit them at least twice a year. Most have become personal friends and we take a keen interest in the quality of their lives and general wellbeing. We introduce new products and contribute design ideas and modifications to develop their existing range, and we offer advice and guidance on presentation and marketing, and encourage them to be innovative. Every effort is made to ensure that all carved items are made from sustainable cultivated timber, and that non-fade child-safe acrylics are used on painted products. We make advance payments of 50% to enable our suppliers to purchase raw materials, and pay the balance immediately on completion of the order. We have worked with some of our suppliers for 18 years. None of our products are made by children.

Our aim is to provide long-term employment for as many people as possible, and our direct trading policy currently provides well-paid regular employment for about 200 families. We take pride in the quality and originality of our stock and our ability to provide a decent standard of living for so many wonderful craftsmen and women employing traditional skills in some of the poorer regions of the world.

The Fair Trade Gift Shop: This retail website follows in the footsteps of our fair trade wholesale website WorldArtandCrafts.com which was launched in May 2006. Our wholesale website proved an instant success, enabling us to dramatically increase the size and frequency of orders, with considerable benefit to the financial stability of our suppliers. We hope that TheFairTradeGiftShop.co.uk, launched in July 2007, proves equally successful.

HISTORY:

Package Holiday: In the autumn of 1988 we took a package tour of the Far East... to Hong Kong, Bangkok and Bali. It was our first trip outside Europe... and the holiday of a lifetime! We had recently left secure teaching careers in London for a precarious self-sufficient lifestyle on a Cornish small-holding and it seemed extremely unlikely that we would be able to afford such a trip again. Yet, incredibly, within the space of 6 months we returned 3 times to the Far East on business.

We arrived home from holiday with a large assortment of inexpensive handcrafted souvenirs and gifts... old masks, shadow puppets, hand-woven and embroidered textiles, batik paintings and sarongs, small primitive bronzes, intricate paper-cuts, palm-leaf books, and a variety of wood carvings. It was only after friends and neighbours began asking if we would consider selling some of them that we began to think about importing items for sale. A few weeks later a chance meeting with a local art dealer resulted in the offer of an exhibition of ethnic art and crafts at his St. Ives gallery the following March... providing we could amass an exciting collection by then. We assured him we could. The possibility of financing world travel through buying and exhibiting ethnic art and crafts was very appealing indeed. We decided at the outset that we would operate a fair trade policy and buy everything possible at source from the artists and crafts men and women.

First Buying Trip: We immediately set about planning our first buying trip. We sold two of our cows to finance the venture and booked another package holiday to the same Far East destinations. This time we travelled out with empty suitcases. Once there we avoided the tourist sites and beaches and concentrated on sourcing stock for our exhibition... returning home just before Christmas laden with bulging baggage and impossible-to-lift suitcases full of handicrafts. We unpacked our stock... animal masks, batik paintings, carved animals, woven belts and scarves, carved chess sets, dragons and mythological flying figures, small stone carvings, and a variety of carved and painted wooden flowers and plants... and once more invited all our friends and neighbours around for their appraisal and guidance on how to price things for the forthcoming exhibition. You can imagine our delight and dismay when they bought half the things on display and began placing orders in advance of our next trip... the trip we were now compelled to make if we were ever to mount a decent exhibition! In fact we made two more buying trips, to Indonesia and India, before the exhibition opened.

Exhibitions: Our first exhibition was at the Salthouse Gallery, St.Ives, in March 1989. It was a huge success, and another exhibition was immediately arranged for the following year. In the meantime we began sourcing other outlets to display our products for sale. These included a travel agent's shop window ( to compliment posters of exotic destinations), and a village post office and store... where demon masks were propped up against cans of syrup! A few months later, in June, we held a major exhibition of Indonesian art and crafts "Shadow and Ceremony" in the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, after which we decided to open our own gallery.

The Morning Price Gallery

We opened our first gallery in August 1989 in a dilapidated former car showroom in Falmouth. We painted the place white inside and out, and called it the Morning Price Gallery... after the special luck-creating "Morning Price" offered to the first customer of the day in the Far East. The gallery was tucked away up a side street so we employed a student to walk around the town wearing a mask and a sandwich board to publicise our whereabouts. We displayed our products on upturned packing cases and wallpaper tables covered with sarongs, and were thrilled to take £788 on our first day and over £3,500 by the end of the week!

The Morning Price Gallery proved to be very popular and soon became a regular port of call for visitors to the South West interested in unusual and interesting handicrafts from around the world. The business grew steadily throughout the 1990s and a new company, World Art & Crafts Ltd, was formed to develop a franchise and establish a wholesale warehouse to supply retailers with fair trade products nationwide.

Early Days

In the early days the stock reflected our personal preferences and was heavily biased in favour of traditional ethnic art and crafts, both old and new, but it wasn't long before more decorative items were added to the range. Today we have no preconceived ideas about what to include, and simply buy whatever appeals to us providing it is well crafted and represents good value. Our degrees in Fine Art, plus the practical experience gleaned over the years, enables us to recognise and appreciate the various art and craft processes and to select, commission and purchase only the finest quality work. Some of our finds are one-off creations, the work of individual painters, carvers or weavers - while others are the products of family co-operatives and small cottage industries. Unlike many commercial importers we have a genuine interest in art and culture, and take the time to learn about the origin, function and meaning of the individual pieces we buy. We take a keen interest in the lives of the craftsmen and women we meet, and many have become personal friends over the years.

A second Morning Price Gallery was opened in the centre of Falmouth in 1992, and another in nearby Penzance in 1998. We continued to trade in Falmouth for 16 years, until December 2004, when we relocated to our huge new premises at Grays Wharf in Penryn.

Since starting the business we have made more than 50 buying trips to the Far East - including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, Bali, Lombok and Sumba. We have also made numerous buying trips to Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, and India and Nepal.

We have expanded our product range to around 3,000 handcrafted items, and now have a thriving fair-trade wholesale business supplying retailers with fair trade gifts nationwide. We also operate a highly original informal franchise for anyone wishing to establish an art and craft business in their own locality. Specialist exhibitions continue to be mounted in other galleries and museums from time to time, and fine art pieces and ethnic artefacts are purchased for, and on behalf of, museums and private collectors in Europe and the United States.

Morning Price Gallery

Update:

We launched our fair trade wholesale website WorldArtandCrafts.com in May 2006. This proved to be such a success that we decided to close our retail shop after nearly 20 years and develop a fair trade retail website. TheFairTradeGiftShop.co.uk was launched in July 2007.