This week in PostMag: covering crafts, from Bhutan’s heritage arts to a designer’s mountainous ‘planet’

Stop me if this sounds familiar: in your day-to-day, you move from big screen, to medium screen, to little screen, ad infinitum. Clicking and typing and swiping aside, not much is still done by hand. In the face of automated processes, machine-powered mass production and hi-tech advancements, craftsmanship is gradually being lost to time and convenience.

I, too, live a digital-driven existence – it’s hard not to, in 2026 – but there are some exceptions: publications such as this one that we can hold in our hands and the stories we read in their pages are imbued with craftsmanship. Writing is a craft, after all, or an art, or a skill, or a gift, if you’re fortunate enough to be born with wordsmithing talent (I envy you) – or it is all of the above. I can attest that the PostMag team puts countless hours into creating what I believe is – and I hope you will agree – a fine magazine.

In this week’s issue, we learn from masters, artisans and artists about preservation, inheritance and the weight of craftsmanship in shaping culture and identity. Armed with a torrent of questions and a shutterbug’s curiosity, I run to the hills – the Himalayas, to be exact – to find out how Bhutan is navigating the protection of its arts and crafts heritage as the Buddhist kingdom grapples for position in the wider narrative of the 21st century.

Craftsmanship is embedded in much more than just “things”. Picture this: a well-executed main course, served at the perfect temperature, bearing perfectly balanced flavours and textures, to tantalise the palate. In Chinese cuisine, “kung fu” dishes are considered the stuff of legends, the ultimate test of ability, but these laboursome recipes, closely guarded and difficult to learn and execute, are vanishing. Hei Kiu Au goes on the hunt for those that remain, and the chefs who are determined to ensure their survival.

Instead of waiting around for a generation of successors who might never materialise, Japanese designer Shinya Kobayashi has taken matters into his own hands – by buying a mountain to bring to life his vision of a self-sufficient community of artisans. Low Shi Ping gets a tour of Mujun Planet. Indeed, it takes a village (to preserve craft traditions).

For some, craftsmanship comes to them like a calling. For others, it’s in their blood. Louis Ho, a fourth-generation carpenter who has been practising woodworking since the late 1970s, speaks with Annemarie Evans about being the last of his kind.