100% handmade products
Scoops, coasters, pour-over stands, and more.
Coasters
Round and Square
Scoops
Long and Short.
Pour-Over Stands
Handmade
Each one of our products are handmade by local Honduran artisans. We intentionally provide artistic manufacturing employment in a rural context with limited employment opportunities.
Coffee Wood
Coffee plant trunks tend to be fairly thin, but exceptionally hard and durable. Locally the wood tends to be used for firewood or tool handles, but we have discovered that it can be transformed into many practical items.
Sustainable
In order to consistently produce high-quality beans, farmers must regularly cut-back their fields to allow for new productive growth. Normally this wood is simply removed and burned. We collect this sturdy, renewable resource to produce beautiful products.
AT DE PALO, HANDMADE IS NOT JUST ABOUT QUALITY AND ARTISTRY. We were born as a response to five years of conversations with Honduran friends about their desire for dignified employment opportunities in rural Honduras. Local carpenter, pastor, and good friend, Eduar Funez, has spent most of his life crafting quality wooden doors and cabinets in the Santa Cruz de Yojoa region. He runs the Honduran manufacturing end of the operation and trains locals to become woodworkers and artists in their own right. All will be paid at least legal minimum wage - earning double the average salary of local agricultural laborers.
SUSTAINABILITY IS NOT AN AFTERTHOUGHT FOR US. DE PALO ORIGINATED FROM AN ASSET-BASED APPROACH TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT WITH A FOCUS ON DEMONSTRATING THE SUSTAINABLE USE OF LOCAL RESOURCES. Coffee fields must be regularly cut down to their stumps in order to maintain ideal production on a farm. New coffee plants then sprout up from the base. Instead of simply leaving the resulting wood to rot or be burnt, we are utilizing a previously undervalued resource - creating value where once there was none.
As long as coffee is produced (which we hope is always and forever), coffee wood will lay in the machete's wake. We transform what would have been ashes into a beautiful addition to your coffee ritual. The only coffee wood we burn are the leftover scraps we use to heat our branding irons.
OUR COFFEE WOOD IS LITERALLY TAKEN FROM THE TRUNK OF A COFFEE TREE. Coffee trees in cultivation are normally 5-10 foot tall plants covered in dark green leaves that develop their fruit over the course of a year. Their small, sturdy trunks bear the load of ripe coffee every year on spindly limbs, often bending over from weight of a full harvest. In order to maintain optimal production, coffee farmers regularly cut their crops back to the base about every ten years, a process known as coppicing. Locals value the leftover wood as an exceptional firewood or as handles for their tools, but rarely is it used for anything else due to its small diameter, which rarely even reaches four inches. This incredibly hard wood is a beautiful, soft yellow or brown distinguished by scattered dark streaks and peppered small knots where the many coffee-laden limbs once grew.
