Arts in Travel showcases the arts and crafts I’ve collected or admired throughout my 40 years of exploring the world, initially as a tour manager, and since 1991, as owner of my own travel company, Far Fung Places. 

These treasured pieces were collected primarily from villages in West Africa, Bhutan, and other parts of the world-where artisans support themselves by creating crafts by hand, using only raw material from nature, and techniques passed down from their ancestors. I initially began to collect art through auctions in Asia, and visited museums to learn more about the pieces I had acquired. Later I collected and learned about my pieces by traveling to the source.

The pieces are utilitarian in nature, or they are created for rituals, initiations or other life- changing events. In Bhutan, arts and crafts are treasured so highly, they are considered royal arts, and link back to the 17th century. 

My explorations to find artistic expressions have become a life-long journey. Each art or craft was a result of a quest to find the artisan “behind the art.” None of the pieces on this site are for sale–I'm sharing them out of a love of art and the hope that you will find them as fascinating as I do.

Living in villages that may not even be electrified, or are several days’ walk from a main road, artisans create “treasures of the hand,” whether they’re working with wood, casting bronze, making glass beads, blacksmithing, creating cane and bamboo baskets, or weaving and dyeing textiles.

In many countries, artisans are illiterate; nothing is written down. Even the formulas for dyeing, the designs in complex weavings, and the process of working in lost wax are all retained in someone's memory and passed down orally from generation to generation. In this way, art connects the past and present through time, place, and community, honoring and preserving the legacy into the future.

In every way, creating art through memory binds the community, giving it continuity through the ages. A daughter of a weaver learns how to create a textile by watching her mother or grandmother dye and weave, and this transmission of shared knowledge strengthens the culture and preserves the art.  It is the common thread that binds communities that I have come to know throughout my 40 years of travel around the world.   

As the world continues to become more global, I am always on the quest to find unique places that honor these traditions.