Amazing Architecture April 2025

Amazing Architecture on the artisan network behind Mercantil

Amazing Architecture profiled Mercantil in April 2025, under the title The Vision Of An Entrepreneur That Connects Global Design With The Richness Of Craft. The piece traces the firm back to a personal search for what luxury actually means, and to a conclusion that exclusivity is defined by the history and origin of a piece rather than by its price.

The article’s focus is the thing we would point to ourselves: the direct relationships with carpenters, blacksmiths, leather workers, basket makers and potters across México, Latin America and the Caribbean. Amazing Architecture puts that network at more than 500 master artisans; we describe it on our own pages as 450+, which is the figure we can stand behind directly.

What a network of that size is actually for is optionality. Commissioning furniture, lighting and accessories to a curatorial standard means the right maker for a given piece may be a potter in one state and a blacksmith in another, and that the schedule is paced by whichever of them is slowest. Holding those relationships directly — rather than buying through a supplier — is what makes that coordination possible at project scale.

It also does something the brief does not require: it keeps traditional techniques in commercial use, which is how a craft stays alive rather than preserved.

Read the full profile on Amazing Architecture.

Related Work

Explore more Mercantil projects: Álvar at Quivira, Bajavaria, Canto Pacífico. Learn about our custom furniture sourcing.