Our Story
Our Story
Crafting Meaning Through Matter
Udiri began with a single paper bead.
While caring for his newborn son, Anthony Nsofor, a chemical engineer and second-generation bead merchant, began experimenting with discarded paper. What started as a quiet material study soon became a larger question:
How much beauty can exist inside an overlooked material?
That first bead marked the beginning of Udiri.
Today, Udiri creates jewellery, accessories and everyday objects from paper, washable cellulose fibre, brass and other reclaimed materials. Designed and made in Nigeria, our work explores how familiar materials can be reshaped into forms that are useful, lasting and quietly expressive.
We are drawn to materials that carry history.
A sheet of paper.
A worn fibre.
A familiar pattern.
A technique passed from one pair of hands to another.
Rather than concealing these origins, we choose to make them visible.
Every Udiri object is shaped through a process of rolling, stitching, weaving, assembling and finishing by hand. Small variations are not flaws but evidence of the people who made them.
Over time, the studio has grown through collaboration with makers whose knowledge and craftsmanship continue to shape the work. Among them are artisans such as Shuri, Ladi and Fatima, who were trained in paper bead making through the Udiri studio. Fatima also contributes a tradition of hula making that informed the development of Rikē, and today leads that aspect of its production.
The name Udiri speaks to form, substance and distinctiveness. It reflects our belief that meaning can be carried through objects: folded, worn, held and passed from one generation to another.
Our collections work across three primary material families:
Paper, which is hand-rolled, treated and assembled into jewellery and sculptural forms.
Brass, shaped into contemporary objects inspired by rhythm, structure and movement.
Cellulose fibre, an FSC-certified material used in bags and accessories, often carrying proprietary surface patterns developed by the Udiri studio.
Patterns such as Rogo, Aya, Ridi and Dóya trace their origins to crops familiar to many of the women who contribute to Udiri's work. Named after cassava, tigernut, sesame seed and yam, they draw from agricultural knowledge carried across places, generations and materials.
Developed within the Udiri studio, these proprietary surface patterns translate memories of cultivation into contemporary form. What began in the field continues through the object.
What unites these materials is not their origin, but their potential.
We make objects slowly.
Objects with memory.
Objects intended to be used, repaired, kept and passed on.
Made in Nigeria.
