While lockdown was one of the most dreaded restrictions during Covid, it did inspire the creation of some great products such as paper jewellery from Kami-so.
“During the first long lockdown in Melbourne, me and my husband didn’t have a lot of work going on,” says co-founder Nadia Sirianni, who exhibited at Reed Gift Fairs Sydney this April.
“We were making greeting cards for our shop and Nathan saw the offcuts of the greeting cards, a pile of them, and had this crazy idea to make jewellery out of it.
“When he made his first pair of earrings I laughed at him and said he was crazy,” she laughs. “Nathan paints the artwork, that’s computer designed and layered with six layers of paper, and then laser cut.”
The word Kami-so means paper layering in Japanese, which made it the perfect name for the business, Sirianni explains.
“The Japanese are known for their many uses of paper and we love Japan, we have been there plenty of times, so the name Kami-so just made sense.”
They started selling the jewellery in their own store and saw it was doing really well. “We thought if it does well in our shop it should do well in other shops. We do sell a bit online but mostly we are trying to wholesale to stores such as gift shops, fashion stores and newsagents.”
Sirianni adds that while there has been demand for necklaces, which they might do down the line, for now they are focusing on earrings—they added reversible ones to the collection this year which were on display at Reed Gift Fairs Sydney.
