This International Women’s Month, our annual series Conversations with HER brings together three women artists across 3 coffee expressions: PURE, AURA, and NOVA. Each artist reflects the spirit of a range, from clarity to emotion to exploration.

Through conversation, we explore how craft and creativity intersect with coffee.

Flavour Carries Feeling

Aura is coffee in its most expressive form. A range shaped by emotion and energy. In our conversation with Charmaine from Nurtureknots Studio, her work moves between tension and softness, forming pieces that hold both fragility and strength. A subtle reflection of AURA, where flavour carries feeling.

103 COFFEE

Aura celebrates bold expression and sensory depth. Your textile work carries that same vibrancy through texture, material, and form. What draws you to fiber as your primary language, and what does it allow you to express that other mediums don't?

CHARMAINE KAMAL

I’m drawn to fiber because it behaves like emotion. It can be pulled, knotted, softened, resisted yet it always remembers tension. Also, every material that is used has its own characteristics, and that's what makes it interesting to play and work with.

Unlike rigid materials, fiber responds to touch. It carries warmth, fragility, and strength all at once. That duality allows me to express vulnerability without losing structure.

Working with strands, one by one - also mirrors how energy accumulates. A single thread feels insignificant, but when repeated, it becomes form, shadow, presence.

For me, fiber isn’t just material. It’s a language of feeling. And that feels very much like AURA—something invisible, yet deeply sensed.

^I03 As a Malaysian artist, what does local pride look like in your practice, and what do you hope to pass on to the next generation of women artists?

^CK Local pride in my practice isn’t about copying tradition, it’s about continuing its spirit. Malaysia has a rich textile heritage, from weaving to knotting, and I see myself as part of that evolving thread. I reinterpret traditional motifs & techniques into contemporary forms, allowing softness to become structural and craft to become architectural.

For the next generation of women artists, I hope they feel permission. Permission to take up space. Permission to experiment. Permission to redefine what “women’s work” can look like.

Our heritage is not static, it grows when we dare to expand it.

^I03 Aura is about invisible energy: aroma, mood, feeling. How do small sensory moments influence your creativity?

^CK Small sensory moments are everything. Light filtering through my workspace. The weight of fibers in my hands. The quiet aroma of coffee in the morning. These details shift my mood before I even begin working.

Creativity doesn’t always start with a grand idea. Sometimes it begins with the atmosphere. When the space feels grounded and calm, my body settles, and from that stillness, form emerges.

Invisible energy shapes visible work. I think that’s what Aura captures so beautifully.

¹⁰³ When someone encounters one of your textile pieces, what kind of emotional or sensory response do you hope it evokes?

^CK I hope they feel a pause. My work is often intricate and textural, so from a distance it may feel sculptural, but up close, it reveals softness, irregularity and hand-tension. I want people to feel both grounded and curious.

There’s something about fiber that invites closeness. Even without touching it, your body senses the warmth. I hope the work evokes a quiet emotional—like standing in a space that feels familiar, even if you don’t know why.

If someone slows down, softens their breath, or feels gently held in that moment, then the piece has done its work.

¹⁰³ If today's coffee had a texture or personality, what would it be and why?

^CK Today’s coffee would feel like loosely woven cotton—soft but structured. It would have warmth at its core, with subtle complexity that unfolds slowly rather than all at once. Not overpowering, but present.

I imagine it as something layered... smooth at first sip, then revealing depth and quiet intensity. Like a woven piece, it carries tension and release in balance.

¹⁰³ Coffee often becomes a quiet companion in the creative process. When coffee and creativity meet in your morning ritual, what does that first hour look like? Does that ritual help you settle in your creative process?

^CK My mornings begin slowly. I arrange my workspace, picking up materials and sipping up my morning coffee—like having a quiet conversation.

That first hour is less about producing and more about sensing. I touch the materials, move things around, sit with the work in silence. The rhythm of sipping and breathing creates a gentle transition into making.

It’s a grounding ritual. Coffee becomes part of the atmosphere... not just fuel, but a quiet companion as ideas begin to take form.

¹⁰³ As a self-taught artist whose work challenges traditional gender roles, what advice would you give to women who are afraid to start?

^CK Start before you feel ready. You don’t need permission, perfection, or a complete plan. Confidence grows through doing, not before it.

For a long time, textile work was dismissed as decorative or secondary. But softness is not weakness. It is resilience. It is adaptability. It is strength that bends without breaking.

If you feel called to create.. just start. The path reveals itself through movement.

Charmaine Kamal as AURA

Charmaine's work reminds us that expression doesn't always need to be loud. It can live in texture, in process, in the unseen. Much like Aura, where every cup holds something to be felt, not just tasted.

Experience the same expression through the curated selection of beans under our AURA range. Learn more about Charmaine through Instagram @charmainekamal_.