Iconic Female Artisan in the City

July 11, 2026|Hua Jing Li

Relaunching Artisan in the City

My monthly series 'Artisan in the City', celebrating the best artisan brands in global capitals, relaunches as 'Iconic Female Artisan in the City'.

The series opens with Angela Flanders Artisan Perfumery, whose iconic handcrafted scents launch this new chapter.

Why Artisan

Mastery in one field is rare.

Most of us scratch the surface of many things, becoming generalists rather than experts in any one. Artisans choose differently — one craft, decades inside it, refining, failing, returning, refining again, until mastery emerges.

This is the heart of Artisan in the City: a celebration of dedication to craft.

I've chosen to focus specifically on female artisans — because there's no woman in "craftsmanship." So this is about craftwomenship: the women who chose to go deep rather than wide, and in doing so, became truly iconic in their field.

Every other month, an iconic female artisan in the city is selected by me.

I make live sketches of the interior and exterior as studies, then return to the studio to paint the exterior in acrylics on canvas

Angela Flanders

This painting is steeped in drama and theatre, reflecting Angela's background in costume design. The composition is staged like a scene from a story about to unfold — a chapter poised on the edge of beginning.

Because scent is so deeply woven into memory and narrative, I wanted the fragrance bottles in the window to hold the chapters of a woman's life. The scent we wore at eighteen is rarely the one we reach for at forty