GUEST EDIT | CARMEN DE BAETS

Lebanese-Dutch Carmen Atiyah de Baets is CARMEN’s co-founder, a multifunctional guesthouse, kitchen, gallery and shop in the heart of Amsterdam. After having worked as a stylist and creative strategist, Carmen is now launching her eponymous guesthouse as an ode to her heritage and the creative community around her. The space functions as an alternative to a traditional hotel, providing a space that first and foremost feels like home, a home where you can stay, dine, create or just relax.

Alongside her husband Joris, Carmen has imagined and curated the entire guesthouse, with a philosophy and sensibility that honour Joris’ grandmother's original design of the house, which she originally bought in the 1980s. Inspired by the history of the house and the couple’s own travels, the rooms are designed with a strong belief in simple but high quality furniture, materials and products.

For ISHKAR, Carmen selects a few of her favourite products and tells us a bit more about Lebanon, alongside a series of photographs taken by her.

Six Lapis Tumblers

“I'm in love with lapis blue and big tumblers are great for your daily water intake!”

Beirut Quilt

“I recently re-discovered quilts and what a beautiful addition they are in the bedroom. It's like an art piece on your bed, crafted by hand. Lebanon also has a longstanding tradition for this craft so it's very nice to see it being made available at Ishkar.”

Arak

“Arak is my favourite drink in the whole world, it makes me feel free and think of Beirut summers… but, for me, this picture is more about the essence. It reminds me of my mom’s and aunt's childhood room in my grandmother’s house in the mountains around Beirut. It's what makes Lebanon special: there are still so many unrenovated parts with so much history and heritage to be felt. Those houses, like the one Bachar captured, are time capsules.”

We also asked Carmen which side of Lebanon she feels is often misunderstood by the general public.

“I think a lot of people in the west think that the government in Lebanon is chosen by the people and therefore that the problems the country has are the fault of the people themselves- and how can it be that I go visit there, it must mean I support Hezbollah? Really, this is totally not the case, Lebanon’s system is immensely corrupt and there are many world powers at play that benefit from keeping it this way. We keep going, we keep persevering because we know how beautiful it can be, how much potential there is in Lebanon. Lebanese people will never ever give up hope and will continue working hard towards a better future in their own land.

Another misconception is that Lebanon is a very religious country where you cannot walk freely as a woman. This is absolutely not true. As in any country, you have to know where to go and where not to go, but I have always felt very safe. People look out for each other.

Lebanon has the sun, the sea, the mountains, and really good food. It is a super fertile country and you can even ski or snowboard there in the winter! I always laugh at patriotic Lebanese people who tell this to other people and now, here I am telling you this! But it’s because it's true!
A lot of Europeans came over for my wedding in 2018 and another thing they said to me was that they were blown away by the hospitality and openness of people. There was one group that went to a natural wine bar in town and, the next day, they were at one of the owners’ mountain-home, before being taken on a hike down into the valley.

Leave all preconceptions at the door and take the trip. Lebanon needs tourism and positive energy.”

See more: https://www.carmenamsterdam.com/

Back to Journal

What to read next?

See more of our writing here

Balkh: “The Mother of All Cities” | Shabnam Nasimi

Shabnam Nasimi
25.12.24

Long before Rome’s power, Babylon’s hanging gardens, or the great palaces of Persepolis, there was ‘Balkh’—the shining jewel of the ancient world. ...

12.12.24

A shipment of one of our wooden Jali trays was recently held by Border Force. When we finally received the package, we unwrapped the packaging to find that Border Force had drilled a small hole through the tray.

Shabnam Nasimi
28.11.24

The Kabul you haven’t heard of; where storytelling shapes its soul.

18.11.24

“I love my glasses and my husband wants to buy me some more. But I’m concerned about supporting a regime which is so oppressive to women. I’ve neve...

Guest Edit
29.01.24

Mathilda Della Torre is a designer and activist whose work focuses on creating projects and campaigns that transition us to a sustainable, fair, an...

15.08.23

One reason we wanted a physical ISHKAR shop was so that we could host events, talks, supper clubs, screenings, exhibitions, etc. A place to join wi...

bookshop
24.11.22

Ruby Elmhirst is a creative producer, working with sustainable and socially conscious designers, artists and brands on unique projects across an array of mediums. Originally from London, her family lives between rural Jamaica and New York. This contrast has vastly informed her mission to promote opportunity, acceptance, education and diversity within design. For this edit she shares her interior wishlist as we get into winter and spend more time indoors.

Exhibition
27.10.22

We spoke to Niloufar Edmonds, the curator of 'Bound for Life and Education: Sara Eshonturaeva and the Jadid Movement in Soviet Uzbekistan' about th...

26.09.22

'My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird' is an extraordinary anthology of fiction by Afghan women writers, published in Feb 2022 by MacLehose Press in the UK...

04.07.22

For the Print Sale for EMERGENCY 2022, some of the photographers are offering one-off prints as NFTs, some for the first time!Including Matthieu Paley, Glen Wilde & Michael Christopher Brown.

22.06.22

On the 15th of August 2021, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. As the world looked on, ISHKAR launched a sale of photographic prints to raise money for EMERGENCY Hospitals in Afghanistan. Like you, thousands of generous people contributed.

One year later the world’s attention has moved on. However the situation in Afghanistan is getting worse and worse. We’ve teamed up with an amazing group of photographers to run the print sale again. This is our opportunity to show Afghanistan that we still care. That we have not forgotten. This is our chance to direct crucial aid to where it is needed most.

Collection
14.06.22

Our handmade shirts and soap stone bowls, photographed by Charles Thiefaine on the island of Socotra, Yemen. November 2021.

Julie Audi
28.03.22

It’s been a whirlwind for Beirut. Lebanon’s capital has spent the past twenty years trying to rebuild itself and its identity. I grew up in a city ...

20.01.22

When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban we immediately paused trading with Afghanistan. After much deliberation, we have now taken the decision to con...

Guest Edit
23.12.21

Selma Dabbagh is a British Palestinian lawyer, novelist and short story writer. We asked Selma which ISHKAR pieces are inspiring her this winter. See here selection here:

Afghanistan
26.11.21

Now is not the time to stop reading, talking and thinking about Afghanistan. The situation continues to worsen by the day. So we've put together a few actions that you can take to make sure the world doesn't turn its back on Afghanistan, when it needs us all the most.

Olivia Rose Empson
06.10.21

Mosul, a city in the North of Iraq, is gradually remembering the steps to a long forgotten tune. Once a vibrant area with art, coffee shops and lo...

25.06.21

Sicily is famous for its street food, from freshly cooked calamari to crisply fried panella. One of our favourite Sicilian streets are Arancini....

17.06.21

This summer we will be hosting different pop ups on London's Columbia Road, home to some of London's best restaurants, street bars and independent boutiques. Combine your pop up visit with some of these local highlights:

25.03.21

Ibi Ibrahim is an American Yemeni curator, artist, writer, filmmaker and musician.

Afghanistan
08.03.21

Words by Shamayel, founder of Blingistan. Illustrations by Blingistan + Daughters of Witches. How many of these five extraordinary women have you h...

Guest Edit
05.03.21

We spoke with Blingistan founder, Shamayel, about the need for playful, bold, conversation starters that can change the narrative about Afghanistan.

Guest Edit
28.01.21

We invited James Seaton, co-founder of TOAST, to cast his well trained design eye over our collection and to be our very first guest editor.

ISHKAR
26.01.21

How, we are often asked, can a box of six glasses made in Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries, be sold in London for £80? In this blog post we aim to show you who gets what and why.

ISHKAR
06.03.20

This is the time for facts, not fear. This is the time for science, not rumours. This is the time for solidarity, not stigma. We are all in this together, and we can only stop it together.

Lucy Fisher
03.05.19

A guest blog by Lucy Fisher I would like to hazard a guess that the first image which comes to mind when asked to think of Afghanistan is probably not a garden in full bloom, carefully tended to by a team of dedicated local gardeners. Despite the horrific turmoil...

Interview
02.02.19

A guest blog by Louis Prosser After almost four years of incalculable destruction and suffering in Yemen, you might think that the last sparks of beauty and creativity had been crushed. You would be wrong.Ibi Ibrahim is a 31-year-old artist working mainly in photography and film. He is Yemeni,...

ISHKAR
02.01.19

[replace_with_featured_image] Fig 1. Babur gardens [source unknown] Fig 2. One of the hospital's where Dr Jerry used to work[source unknown] W...

ISHKAR
16.10.18

‘I don’t care if you’re in Timbuktu,’ we might say. ‘You’ll be here tomorrow or else!’ Or perhaps, ‘He’s flirted with every girl from here to Timbuktu!’ It means something like God Knows Where, or A Million Miles Away.

Louis Prosser
08.10.18

'Bebinin, bebinin,' insisted Parsa. I was in the royal city of Esfahan, which the Persians call 'nesf-e jahan' ('half of the world'). In a cramped bazar beneath soaring domes and arches, I was in a world of carpets. 'Look, look: apache, apache!’ The word rang a bell (an American tribe?) but it took me a few seconds to see. It was a truly beautiful piece.

Sofya Saheb
10.07.18

The Pin Project is an initiative ISHKAR launched on Kickstarter last year. We raised over £63,000 to provide jewellery training and work for displaced people living in Burkina Faso, Turkey, Jordan and Afghanistan.

ISHKAR
28.05.18

Give a child a packet of crayons and tell them to draw a fantasy island, and they might well conjure up the Yemeni island of Soqotra.

ISHKAR
12.12.17

As humans, we crave order. For many, productive work provides this structure. The world around us might be chaotic. But with work we can, at least at times, control what we do in a way we are rarely able in other parts of life.

ISHKAR
25.07.17

At the beginning of this year, Flore and I found ourselves at the world trade fair for homewares, Maison et Objet in Paris. After a morning of walking through the colossal trade halls we were quite frankly bored of looking at objects. We were just about to escape and get a coffee when we came across Sebastian Cox’s stand.

ISHKAR
20.07.17

Once a hipster trend, the desire for handmade goods has become thoroughly mainstream. It can be seen from the meteoric rise of Etsy, right through to proliferation of the word ‘artisan’ on products ranging from shoes to bread. Handmade products tend to be more expensive, and by no means assure better ‘quality’, so what’s all the fuss about?

ISHKAR
13.07.17

As wedding season approaches, we have been getting an increasing number of exasperated customers asking when our most popular glasses will be back in stock again. Well, here's the honest answer – we have NO idea.

ISHKAR
08.05.17

[replace_with_featured_image] Fig 1. Traces of Aleppo [source unknown] Zaina Sabbagh bought her first wooden printing block when she was 14. Sh...

ISHKAR
05.04.17

I remember singing a nursery rhyme about Timbuktu when I was in primary school. I can’t remember what it was now – was it ‘from Kalamazoo to Timbuktu’? – but I remember the images clearly. A fabled desert city at the end of the world where Arabs and Africans would meet to trade salt and gold, and in the cool of enormous mud structures blue robed scholars would scribble marginalia in great gold embossed manuscripts.

ISHKAR
28.09.16

Yet we would be wrong to think of crafts as a small sector at the fringes of the global economy. Far from it, crafts are in fact the second largest employer in the developing world, and have a proven track record of leading a number of developing world countries towards developed world status.

ISHKAR
12.09.16

The World Bank has ranked Afghanistan, as the 177th easiest country in which to do business with in the world. Unfortunately that was out of 188 economies. Here’s a quick barrage of some more dismal figures… In 2014 Afghanistan’s economy lost a third of its value, and annual economic growth slowed from 14% down to 1.5% where it hovers around today.

ISHKAR
04.08.16

Every now and then a short video or article pops up on our newsfeed which tells a captivating story about Afghanistan or Syria that has nothing to do with war. For a couple of minutes we are reminded that countries like Afghanistan and Syria are home to talented, energetic people whose lives are not solely defined by the circumstances of the country in which they live. It’s a nice reminder, but we return to our day, forgetting about what we watched or read shortly after.

ISHKAR
13.07.16

Theresa May’s recent triumph as Tory party leader reminded us of a controversial decision she took earlier this year. Despite 2015 being the most dangerous year to date in terms for civilian casualties, she successfully lifted the UK government’s blanket ban on deportations back to war-torn countries.

ISHKAR
12.07.16

When we set up Peacock House last Christmas, we only intended to sell a handful of cufflinks in order to fund a nice post-Kabul holiday. The response we received was phenomenal, and we sold ten times the number of cufflinks we initially expected to sell! What started out as a week of work for the young group of jewellers we were working with in Kabul, turned into five weeks of full-time employment.

ISHKAR
05.07.16

The closing of the Greek/Macedonian border in March left 15,000 refugees stranded in Idomeni. This area became the largest informal refugee camp in Europe since World War II.

ISHKAR
25.06.16

Stepping out of Beirut airport you are immediately hit by the smell of rotting rubbish. It is a heady reminder of the rubbish crisis which hit Beirut a few months ago. With landfill sites overspilling, rubbish lined the streets of Beirut, piling up in forests and river beds surrounding the capital.

ISHKAR
23.06.16

Whilst European leaders complain that Europe is reaching a critical point where it can no longer absorb any more refugees, and concerns over immigration have driven the UK towards an ignominious EU exit - with a population of just 4 million, Lebanon is home to more refugees than the whole of Europe combined.

ISHKAR
02.04.16

I have recently taken up carpentry classes. I have no talent for making things with my hands, and the few things I’ve been able to make are very poorly put together. But for three hours a week I saw, I sharpen, I sand and I hammer. And it makes me feel good.

ISHKAR
02.03.16

Outre le blog de Peacock House, de nombreux ouvrages/documentaires de qualité soulignent différentes facettes de l'Afghanistan. Ce pays a fait couler beaucoup d'encre au sujet de ses guerres, dont il a été le theatre depuis 1979, mais a su aussi seduire ses visiteurs par la richesse de ses montagnes et de ses habitants. L'Afghanistan se découvre aussi sous un autre jour..

ISHKAR
15.02.16

In Winter, a thick cloud hangs over Kabul as people light wood and coal burning stoves to warm their homes. As a result the last few weeks Kabul’s weather has been described by Yahoo weather as ‘smoke’. We left the polluted capital, for the western city of Herat for a restorative break and to visit Hajji Sultan, the head of one of Herat’s last remaining glassmaking families.

ISHKAR

(noun)

ISHKAR

(noun)

ISHKAR

(noun)

ISHKAR

(noun)

ISHKAR

(noun)

ISHKAR

(noun)

GUEST EDIT | CARMEN DE BAETS

What to read next?

See more of our writing here

Cart

Product added to your Cart