Jewellery is often made from valuable gemstones like emeralds or diamonds and precious metals like gold or silver, or valueless things like animal horns.
The coming new year will see Peth Yoeung – a locally-owned, award-winning healthtech platform – further carry through in its commitment to improving the quality of health services in Cambodia with innovative new technologies, its co-founder has said.
The humble water hyacinth was once considered a plant with no practical uses, but now it is the raw material for an exciting line of fashionable women’s hats, bags and baskets.
Bamboo has long been used for many purposes, such as weaving baskets, but now, a collective is weaving attractive new products and finding great success.
Used car tyre inner tubes and concrete sacks were not always considered ideal materials for handbags, backpacks and other useful consumables, but thanks to the efforts of one Cambodian, they are now available in markets as far away as Canada, Australia, the UK and the US.
Coconuts are prized for their milk and their delicious meat, but their husks and shells most often end up as fuel for cooking fires.
Palm trees provide many benefits to Cambodian society. Their leaves are used for roofing, their fruit can be used to make palm cakes, the juice from their flowers can be squeezed to make sugar and their stems can be woven onto rafts.
Weaving is common throughout the Kingdom, especially in rural areas. Palm leaves are woven into everyday consumer products like baskets, boxes, trays or decorative products.
Perhaps few people think of the far off provinces of the Kingdom as centres of innovation, but a private school near the Vietnamese border is working to dispel that myth.
‘When you look at these flowers, they appear simple. But what you do not realise is the many stages of decoration they have passed through before becoming so beautiful.
Although Chhat Sokhoeurb drifted into becoming a weaver and vendor of banana pseudostem products through her younger brother, it is a career of social interest that she has found a passion for.