Salt Spring Island is a well known haven for artists, craftspeople and creative free thinkers. The island has had a colourful history since its days of being seasonal Salish hunting and fishing grounds. Settlers came from Hawaii, newly freed slaves from California, and more recently, dissenters opposed to the Vietnam war.
Something in the water here has made our little island of 10,000 people a remarkable community that simply glows. There is almost nothing you couldn`t find being hand made or grown by someone on the island. There are clubs and gatherings for almost every interest. People talk to each other here. I have lived in or visited most continents, but I couldn`t imagine living anywhere else now, Salt Spring and the Gulf Island community have something special, come and visit and take a bit of its abundant soul home with you. Kelly Neville

Silk Road Craft Studio is a must-visit on your tour of the island. We are now open!  call 250 538 8259 any day 10 to 5 to be sure of a viewing.

Our studio is housed within an authentic Mongolian Yurt, a long way from home! The carving detail, authentic goat and horse hair ropes, sinew ties in the latice, make a visit all the more interesting.

We have a wide range of pure silk hand painted scarves and mounted paintings by Bulgarian artist Ganka Slavova.  All the work she produces is unique, no stencils, no limited editions, they are individual designs and no two will be the same.
We have a range of West Coast inspired art, Haida inspired designs, and we can even produce to your own chosen theme and colour scheme, just provide your wishes.
 Not only are all the scarves unique, there is no rivalry for the crispness of colour and texture that only hand painted silk can achieve.
Masako Neville, my wife, is also producing very nice traditional Japanese tie-dye scarves for the studio, using individually hand woven silk scarves from Thailand as her raw material. There are scarves dyed in natural plant dyes, a method called Kusaki-zome; wonderful colours shown off in this high sheen silk. There are also scarves using Japanese tie-dyeing methods called Shibori, that have been used for making kimono designs for centuries. She comes from an area of Japan famous for silk work, and used to enjoy watching her grandfather raising silk worms at home on a diet of Mulberry leaves he grew for that purpose.

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