Featured Shop: Studio Armadillo

Hi, my name is Anat Stein. Hadas Kruk and I are the designers behind Studio Armadillo, a collection of Judaica for design lovers. We are based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Hadas and I became friends while studying industrial design. After working on some design projects together during our senior year, we established Studio Armadillo. In the beginning, we worked for other entrepreneurs in the industry, creating one-of-a-kind items related to Jewish culture that were exhibited in museums and galleries in Israel and the US. Then, a couple of years ago, we felt we were ready to launch our own small collection.

Developing our collection was – and still is – quite similar to the industrial processes we encountered in the past. We start with 3-D mock-ups, turn our paper models into computer models, fine-tune the designs on the computer, 3-D print our final designs, and then turn them into plaster molds. Finally, we work with local workshops run by highly skilled artists (who also have their own collections) to produce the pieces in small quantities using serial production. We love being responsible for the entire vision of our brand – we are the clients, creative managers, production managers, and the marketers. It’s exciting!

All of our collections evolve from holiday to holiday, but we always aim to celebrate tradition and add interest, joy and playfulness to the holiday table. When people ask what inspires us to create modern Judaica, our answer, quite simply, is that our work reflects us. We are curious about roots and culture, holidays, habits, food, hosting, and also various aspects of Jewish street life. Our creative inspiration is a mix of what we love in design: the simplicity of origami, geometry and mathematics; the playfulness of games and puzzles; and of course, modernism – a design era we adore.

Choosing Etsy as the platform for our shop has allowed us to expand our audience; Etsy allows us to reach a wider audience than we could ever imagine. Many design blogs and stylish home shops have reached out to us through Etsy. In the future, we wish to keep designing and producing joyful objects made for celebrations, enjoy our creative process and our friendship, spend time with our families, go camping, go to rock concerts, and never talk about work on Shabbat!

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Portait by Arnon Kaufman; table photographs by Aya Wind; all other images by Studio Armadillo.

Shop Studio Armadillo