My Barron's profile of ARTICLE22

Check out my latest story for Barron's: I profiled ARTICLE22 -- A company that empowers artisans from Laos who create jewelry out of the material of the Vietnam War-era bombs that still ravage the countryside.

Founder Elizabeth Suda on the significance of acknowledging this history:

"Suda studied art history and history as a college student, but says she’s disappointed by how unexamined the history of the bombings on Laos remain in schools throughout the United States. When Suda started exploring the country, she was shocked at seeing bombs being detonated in clusters off the sides of rural dirt roads. It made a visceral impact on her, hammering home how much she didn’t know about the fraught legacy of the Vietnam War.

'Any place where conflict has existed you have this cycle of social scars that are generated beyond the generation that was actually engaged in the initial conflict. In the case of Laos, you have kids born 41 years after the war who have no sense of what the war was, but who are the ones encountering these dangerous objects in their land, who are dying and being maimed and going blind,” Suda says. She says part of the power of ARTICLE22’s designs comes from etching this reality in the minds of the greater public, while honoring the traditions and talents of Laos’s local artisans."

More here.