About Mossbell

I trained as a botanist and spent four years in a lab counting spores, which is exactly as interesting as it sounds for the first two years. What I kept noticing was that the mosses were the only things on the bench that never needed me. Leave a sealed jar of cushion moss on a north-facing sill and come back in eight months and it is still there, still green, quietly getting on with it.

Mossbell started in 2019 on a kitchen table in Shahpur Jat, mostly because friends kept asking me to build them one. The first twenty terrariums went out in jam jars with the labels soaked off. We have better glass now, but the method has not changed: drainage, a thin layer of charcoal, substrate, moss, seal it, leave it alone.

How things are made

Everything is assembled here in the studio, in batches of twenty or thirty. The moss is cushion moss, harvested in small quantities from the same two suppliers we have used since the beginning, and it goes out damp so it can be pressed straight in. Glass is hand-blown by a workshop in Firozabad. The brass tools are turned locally and they are heavier than they need to be, which is the point.

Batches mean we run out. If something is not available we will tell you when it is coming back rather than take your money and hope. Most weeks the answer is a fortnight.

What we are not

We are not a subscription, we are not a lifestyle brand, and we do not have a warehouse. We are two people, a work table, and a great deal of moss. If that suits you, write to us.

— Nila Sethi, founder