Korakot Aromdee grew up in a Thai fishing community, where traditional craft wasn’t an aesthetic choice — it was simply how things got done. Watching local artisans, including members of his own family, build fishing gear by hand gave him an early, almost instinctive feel for materials and technique — the kind of knowledge that isn’t taught so much as absorbed, through years of watching, repeating, and getting it wrong before getting it right.
That grounding eventually turned into a bigger question for Aromdee: what happens if you take these inherited techniques and push them somewhere new? His answer wasn’t just about keeping old methods alive for their own sake. He wanted craft to do more — to actually support the communities it came from, turning generations of local expertise into real livelihoods and, eventually, into art and design that carries economic weight rather than just cultural nostalgia.