5 stores · curated ORBIS register
Westlands, Nairobi
Lulu Kitololo Studio, made in Kenya, sells vibrant African stationery and art goods including art prints, calendars, tea towels, fridge magnets and notebooks, organized into collections such as Ocean Vibes and Swahili Phrases. Prices range from KSh1,000 to KSh12,500, and the studio also offers branding services through Studio Njano.
Best for Hand-drawn african stationery and art prints
Nairobi / Kenya
Spring Valley Coffee's roots reach back to 1905, to one of Kenya's first coffee estates, established in the Spring Valley neighborhood on the outskirts of Nairobi.
Best for Named single-estate lots from one of Kenya's earliest coffee estates
Spring Valley Coffee's roots reach back to 1905, to one of Kenya's first coffee estates, established in the Spring Valley neighborhood on the outskirts of Nairobi. The current roasting operation began in 2009, in the same neighborhood the estate itself once occupied a century earlier.
The company retails named single-estate lots — Halisi, Nuru, Masara, and Rui Ruiru among them — giving each origin its own identity rather than folding them into a generic house blend. That naming convention lets drinkers track a specific estate's character from one harvest to the next, a practice more common among specialty roasters than the anonymous export-grade coffee that has historically left Kenya in bulk.
Built on a site with more than a century of coffee history behind it, and selling that history back to drinkers through named single-estate lots, Spring Valley Coffee ties Nairobi's coffee present directly to one of the country's earliest estates.
Nairobi
The Kikoy Co. makes traditional kikoys, trousers, robes and homeware from 100% combed cotton grown in East Africa, hand-finished by a women's group it has supported since 2003, and sells from a Village Market shop and a workshop at Maramba Tea Estate in Limuru.
Best for Handwoven cotton kikoys and homeware
Racecourse, Nairobi
Workshop Nairobi, at Racecourse on Ngong Road, sells mid-century modern furniture including coffee and dining tables, sofas, armchairs and lighting, made from hardwoods dried and shaped in-house with Kitenge and mud cloth fabric accents. Prices range from KSh3,500 for a chopping board to KSh38,000 for a console table, open Monday-Friday 9:30am-5pm.
Best for Mid-century modern hardwood furniture
Limuru / Kenya
Arnold Butler McDonell bought 350 acres in the Limuru highlands from the British government in 1904, and spent over a decade watching coffee, corn and flax all fail at the farm's 7,200-foot altitude.
Best for Guided tastings and farm-style lunch at the Limuru smallholding where
Arnold Butler McDonell bought 350 acres in the Limuru highlands from the British government in 1904, and spent over a decade watching coffee, corn and flax all fail at the farm's 7,200-foot altitude. In 1918, a friend visiting from India brought him a gift of a few Camellia sinensis assamica seedlings; McDonell planted twenty acres on a whim, and in 1926 sold his first harvest to the Mabroukie tea factory — the sale credited as the start of commercial tea production in Kenya.
Five generations of McDonell's family have lived on the land since, and the farm is now run by his granddaughter, Fiona Vernon, alongside her husband Marcus. Visitors touring Thursday through Sunday walk through the original gardens and surrounding indigenous forest, home to colobus monkeys, before a guided tea tasting and a farm-style lunch served at the family's own home — a working farm and family residence opened to visitors rather than a built-for-tourism estate.
Where much of Kenya's tea trade runs through large estates supplying export markets in bulk, Kiambethu is still the same smallholding McDonell turned to tea out of desperation after a decade of crop failures — and still in the hands of the family that made that gamble pay off a century ago.
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