Gamcha began with a trip to Nepal.
In 2009, founder Louise Holm visited the country for the first time and fell in love with it. Her family had an ecologically run guesthouse in a small Nepalese village called Gamcha, and during her visits she and her father became fascinated by the traditional handicrafts being made in small workshops nearby.
That village eventually gave the company its name.
Today, Gamcha combines Scandinavian design with traditional Nepalese felt-making. Its mobiles, garlands and nursery decorations are still handmade in Nepal, where the company works with local women to produce each piece by hand.
It's a lovely story, but we probably wouldn't have chosen Gamcha for that alone.
We chose it because the things they make have personality.
A bear snuggles quietly on the moon. Woodland animals turn slowly above a cot. A parade of wonderfully dapper geese, complete with tiny hats and scarves, looks as though it might be heading somewhere important. They're beautifully designed, but there's something cheerful and slightly imperfect about them too. You can see that they have been made rather than manufactured.
That feels particularly right in a child's room where baby beige is becoming all too common.
There can be a temptation to approach children's interiors almost as we would our own: choose a palette, make everything coordinate, remove anything that disrupts the aesthetic. Children, of course, tend to have other ideas. Their rooms gradually fill with drawings, stones, favourite books, birthday cards, inexplicable collections and toys arranged according to systems known only to them.
We like rooms that leave space for that.
Gamcha's pieces are beautiful enough to appeal to the grown-up choosing them, but whimsical enough to belong to the child who lives there. A mobile doesn't need to match the curtains. It can simply be a flock of sheep floating over the cot because that makes somebody happy.
There is also something reassuringly human about knowing how these pieces are made.
Gamcha works with women in Nepal who create the designs by hand using traditional felting techniques. The company says its work now provides employment for more than 125 Nepalese women, with an emphasis on fair working conditions and giving women the opportunity to earn their own income.
That means the little variations between pieces aren't flaws to be corrected. They're part of what they are. A curve might be slightly different, an animal might have its own expression, and no two handmade pieces will ever be completely identical.
We think children's rooms are better for things like that.
Not everything needs to be perfectly matched or perfectly manufactured. Some things can simply be beautiful, funny, handmade and full of character.
And perhaps, years from now, when the cot has gone and the room belongs to a much bigger child, that little felt mobile will still be tucked away somewhere.
We hope so.
Photography by Gamcha.