Behind the scenes ·
Why we put a karigar's name on every sofa
Nobody in Nepali furniture signs their work. We decided that was a mistake, and we built a system to fix it.
A conversation on the workshop floor
A customer came back to the workshop a few years ago with a photograph on her phone. It was a sofa we had built for her parents, and she wanted the same one for her own flat. She could not tell us the fabric name, the size, or the year. We eventually found it in a paper register, three books back, by matching a delivery address.
While our senior karigar was reading that register, he said something that stayed with us: he could remember building it. He remembered the cloth and he remembered the customer's father. But his name was nowhere in the book. The register recorded what was sold. It did not record who made it.
What the Karigar Ledger is
Every sofa that leaves this workshop now carries a small label with a serial number and a QR code. Type that number into the ledger page on this website, or point a phone camera at the code, and you see five things: the name of the karigar who built it, the date it was completed, the exact fabric batch, the exact foam specification, and the live warranty status with the number of days remaining.
From that same screen you can reorder the identical fabric, book a care visit, or refer a friend for a two thousand rupee credit. It is not a marketing page. It is the actual production record, opened up to the person who paid for the sofa.
Why it matters commercially
There is a trust problem in Nepali furniture and everybody in the trade knows it. Search online and you will find video after video of customers who paid an advance for furniture that arrived wrong, arrived late, or did not arrive at all. That fear is the single largest obstacle between a good workshop and a new customer, and no amount of adjectives on a website addresses it.
A verifiable record does. It also solves the practical problems: matching an extension order eighteen months later, knowing exactly what foam to use for a refill in year six, and settling a warranty question with a record rather than an argument.
Why it matters to the workshop
There is a quieter reason, and it is the real one. In Nepali manufacturing the maker is almost always anonymous. The brand is named, the shop is named, the owner is named. The person whose hands did the work is not.
A karigar who knows their name goes onto the label builds differently. Not because anyone is watching — our senior people were already meticulous — but because attribution changes the relationship between a person and their work. Apprentices ask when their name will appear. It has become something people work towards.
The obvious objection
We were asked, fairly, whether naming a karigar honours him or exploits him — whether it is craft or marketing. It is a serious question and we thought about it before we started.
Our position: naming without consent, without a wage rise, and without any path forward would be exploitation. So every karigar chooses whether their name appears, can withdraw it, is named on the piece and not merely used as a photograph, and the ledger records the person who actually did the work rather than the most photogenic member of the team. On the carved Newari Kala pieces, the carver and the upholsterer are both named, because both built it.
We do not claim this fixes anything structural about how craft is valued in Nepal. It is one workshop, one label, one system. But it is a beginning, and it is the part of this business we are proudest of.
If you already own an RP sofa
Look for the label under the front rail on the right-hand side, or under the chaise on an L-shape. Type the serial into the ledger page. If your sofa predates the system and has no label, send us a photograph on WhatsApp with the approximate year and delivery address, and we will find you in the old register and issue a record retrospectively. We have done it for several dozen customers already.
— Written in the workshop. Questions to 9849239091 on WhatsApp.