A Golden Thread

A passion for the craft of artisans and makers from around the world inspires the store and home of travelling merchant Lisa Storer - founder of The Storer in Johannesburg.

- Garreth Van Niekerk

THE JOURNEY

If you, like us, long to look into the sights and treasures of the world’s craft communities we highly recommend a scroll through Lisa Storer’s globe-trotting Instagram account. From month to month the Johannesburg-based retailer shares envy-inducing snapshots from the far-flung places she journeys through to bring her shop, called The Storer, to life. It’s via her page that we’re able to explore places few travellers get to, like Tamegroute — a small village located in the Draa River Valley in Southern Morocco, famous for their characteristic green ceramics, in which The Storer trades.

‘When I started conceiving The Storer I decided the best place to go to would be to Morocco for the first trip, and it lived up to everything I had been building up and fantasising about.’ Lisa says.

As a fine art and fashion design graduate, Lisa’s appreciation for the handmade comes from a well-trained eye, but also from a family history of adventurers.

‘My dad travelled extensively in South America and used to conjure up these stories that made me want to travel. Going out to remote areas locally also really set the tone for me as a child. Conventional education has always been a challenge for me, because it puts you in boxes, but where I am at now came very much from my formative years, where the adults around me set the interest and yearning to discover these places and people who were outside convention.’