Where we go.
Who we find.
What we bring back.
The Guardia Designs sourcing model is built on direct relationships — with weavers, potters, carvers, furniture makers, and the communities that carry these traditions forward. We do not buy from intermediaries. We do not source from trade catalogs. We travel, we sit with makers, we commission work, and we bring it home in the condition it deserves.
Mexico · American Southwest · West Africa & African Diaspora
Oaxaca · Chihuahua · Mexico City
Mexico
"Where craft is still a living language."
Every Mexico piece is selected in person, on sourcing trips Raquel makes twice yearly. Nothing is sourced from wholesale catalogues, trade shows, or online marketplaces.
Mexico is our most prolific source — not because it is convenient, but because the concentration of living artisan tradition is unmatched anywhere in the world. Raquel maintains direct relationships with makers across three regions, each with a distinct craft identity.
Macramé — Oaxaca & Chihuahua
Hand-knotted in natural jute, cotton, and agave fiber by artisans who learned the form from their grandmothers. We commission work at scale — wall installations calibrated to your exact wall dimensions, knotted in colorways developed collaboratively with each maker. No two pieces leave the same workshop twice.
Zapotec Textiles — Teotitlán del Valle
The Zapotec weaving tradition is over 2,500 years old. We work with family-run talleres where natural dyes — cochineal, indigo, marigold — are still the standard. Rugs are woven to commission: your palette, your scale, your room.
Mata Ortiz Pottery — Chihuahua
Among the most technically demanding ceramic traditions in the Western Hemisphere. Each vessel is hand-coiled, hand-painted in intricate geometric pattern, and fired in outdoor kilns. We select pieces during sourcing trips — never from catalogs.
Mesquite Furniture — Michoacán
Solid mesquite is harvested from managed groves and worked by hand into furniture with clean, modernist lines. The wood's natural grain variation means every piece is singular. We work with a single workshop that has been making furniture for four generations.
Sonoran Desert · Arizona · New Mexico
American Southwest
"Materials that ask nothing except honesty."
Arizona makers are visited seasonally. We prioritize studio artists over production operations — people who make with their hands, not manage factories.
The Sonoran Desert has a design intelligence of its own — one built around restraint, natural material, and the understanding that a room should not compete with the landscape outside its windows. Raquel has spent years building relationships with Arizona and New Mexico makers whose work carries that intelligence.
Desert Ceramics — Scottsdale & Tucson
Wheel-thrown and hand-built stoneware made from Arizona clay, fired in reduction kilns that produce matte, textured finishes in warm desert tones: burnt sienna, sage, raw umber, bone. These are functional objects with the weight and presence of sculpture.
Woven Leather & Wood — New Mexico
Chairs and stools with hand-woven leather seats, frames in peeled willow or salvaged pine. Objects that belong in a room with macramé and a Zapotec rug. Objects that improve with use.
Desert Botanicals — Sonoran
Agave, saguaro, ocotillo, prickly pear — sourced from nurseries that propagate from locally collected seed. These are not houseplants. They are living architecture, native to the same landscape as the pottery and furniture alongside them.
Ghana · Mali · Nigeria · Chicago
West Africa & African Diaspora
"Pattern as philosophy. Object as memory."
African objects are sourced through a combination of Chicago community relationships, direct maker networks, and verified import partners. Every piece arrives with written provenance and cultural context documentation.
Raquel's relationship with African craft traditions began not in Africa but in Chicago — in the South Side markets and community spaces where Ghanaian, Malian, and Nigerian immigrants had built their own design culture on American soil. That proximity created fluency, not tourism. It is the difference between understanding a tradition and merely appreciating it from a distance.
Kente Cloth — Ghana
Hand-woven in narrow strips on traditional strip looms, then sewn together into full cloths. Each pattern carries encoded meaning — specific colorways denoting occasion, lineage, aspiration. We curate kente as wall art and textile art, always with full provenance documentation from the weaving family.
Mudcloth (Bogolanfini) — Mali
Woven from hand-spun cotton and dyed using a centuries-old fermentation process — mud applied to pre-dyed cloth, creating graphic resist patterns in deep indigo and cream. Each piece is unique. Mudcloth cannot be perfectly reproduced, which is precisely the point.
Ceremonial Carved Objects — Nigeria & Benin
Wooden sculptural objects — masks, figures, ceremonial vessels — selected for their formal quality and considered as art objects, not ethnographic curiosities. We provide provenance documentation and sourcing history for every carved piece.
Adinkra Objects — Ghana
Objects stamped or carved with adinkra symbols — each symbol encoding a specific concept from Akan philosophy: endurance, adaptability, unity. We select pieces that carry meaning the collector can understand and carry forward.
The full process
The Initial Conversation
Every sourcing engagement begins with understanding what you collect, what you know, and what room — or rooms — we are building toward. This is not a brief. It is a conversation about taste, history, and the life you want to live inside your walls.
The Sourcing Trip
Raquel travels with your project in mind. She visits workshops, sits with makers, handles materials. Pieces are selected against a mental model of your space — its proportions, its light, the other objects already in it.
Provenance Documentation
Every piece that enters the collection is documented: maker name, location, technique, materials, cultural context. This documentation travels with the object — permanently.
White Glove Delivery & Installation
Objects are packed at source by the makers themselves, in materials appropriate to the piece. Transit is climate-controlled where required. Delivery is in-person, white glove, by our team — unpacked, placed, installed, and positioned in your space. Nothing is left at a door.
White Glove Delivery & Installation
"Nothing is left at a door. Everything arrives in context."
— Raquel Guardia
What makes each
piece singular
Direct Maker Relationship
Every piece in our collection can be traced to the specific individual who made it. We know their name, their community, their technique, their lineage. This is not marketing language. It is the condition of sourcing.
Technique Irreproducible at Scale
We specifically avoid objects that can be manufactured. Hand-knotted macramé takes weeks. Zapotec natural-dye weaving is seasonal. Mata Ortiz pottery cannot be cast. The time embedded in the object is part of its value.
Formal Intelligence
Every object is chosen for its design quality as an object — proportion, surface, color, weight. It must be able to stand alone in a white room and hold. If it cannot do that, it does not belong in a collector's home.
Provenance Documentation
Every object arrives with written documentation: maker, origin, technique, materials, cultural context, and the sourcing notes Raquel made when she selected it. These documents are yours permanently.
White Glove Placement
The final criterion is service. An extraordinary object placed carelessly is a failure of the whole process. Installation is included — professional, in-home, positioned by our team in the light and context for which it was chosen.
Begin the process