OUR STORY
Hello
We are Emily & Mel, welcome to Emmela, our online homeware and lifestyle shop. We’re two friends living on different continents - Africa and Europe - with a shared passion. We love filling our homes with beautifully designed things that are made by hand, maybe a little unusual and not easy to come by… if there’s a story behind it, we want to know.
All our pieces have been mindfully sourced in West Africa from small-scale, local artisanal designers, entrepreneurs and collectives, all with good stories to tell; women-led enterprises, working to preserve and promote fading cultural art-forms, creative reuse of materials, and promoting new innovative design methods.
The wellbeing of the artisans, their families and the environment is at the heart of everything we do. Being on the ground in Africa enables us to see first-hand the value of genuine fair trade and the positive outcomes for the artisans and their communities.
Emmela is a space for sharing the items we love sourcing. We hope you can treasure them as much as we do.