As rural ingenuity comes to town, we present an oddball collection of under-cover and over-the-top creativity from across Cambodia. 180 pages. Full colour. Soft bound. $32 RRP

Available February 2026

In rural communities far beyond the centres of metropolitan abundance, improvisation is a constant necessity - it’s the notion of ‘making-do’, solving problems on the spot with whatever resources are at hand.

As Cambodia rapidly transitions towards an urbanised culture, this resilient approach has been hard-wired through generations that have undergone the vicissitudes of deprivation and warfare as the western world poured in armaments, and advice.

In this book of short observations and collections are the ordinary and unusual things made by people in Cambodia.

I’ve also blended in objects like a traditional earthenware cooking pot and the local Buddhist funeral chedi, a version of the western headstones that provide a permanent memorial to the dead. These local ‘specialties’ represent complex traditions extending back to the Angkorian civilisation, and thousands of years beyond.

The book is divided into seven roughly bundled, interconnected worlds: the body, architecture, Buddhist art, food, death, nature, signage, and spirit worlds. Each page contains a photograph and descriptions of an individual artifact or action, or occasionally, over a few pages, the production process or the workshop in which objects are made.

Sometimes the artifact is isolated from its context so we can focus on its physical properties, such as a donut, or an inflated swan, while at other times the object is seen in the context to its workshop practice. Occasionally, I have included historical photography, revealing links to the country’s colonial past. Flip forward.