A woodcarving workshop best known for its hand-carved chess sets, with a small sideline in rugs, jewelry, and embroidered dress work sourced from neighboring family workshops.
Sepidar Woodcraft started as a one-carver operation producing chess sets for a local market stall, and the chess sets are still the workshop's signature piece — each figure is carved from walnut or mulberry and finished with a hand-rubbed oil that darkens the wood over the first few months of use.
The board itself is built separately by a second craftsperson who inlays the border in a repeating geometric pattern, so a finished set usually passes through two pairs of hands before it leaves the workshop.
Alongside the chess sets, the workshop sells a small, rotating selection of goods from family workshops nearby — a rug, a set of jewelry, an embroidered dress — rather than trying to produce everything itself. It's a deliberate choice: the founder would rather carry a few pieces she trusts than expand into crafts the workshop doesn't have the hands for.
A single chess set takes two to three weeks depending on the queue; the carved figures alone can take several days, since each one is shaped and detailed individually rather than cast from a mold.
