"Minha casa sua casa" is Portuguese for "my house is your house," and this phrase is the theme of Joana Deus's business here, Casa Brazil LLC.

Deus, a native of Brazil, says she opened her shop last August with the intent to bring the culture and art of her country to Spokane.

Located in a bright green building near the intersection of Northwest Boulevard and Cochran Street in North Spokane, the store sells a variety of handcrafted wares made by artisans in Brazil.

"Everything in the shop is handmade by a Brazilian artisan—someone from a little community or someone in a big city," Deus says. "These people aren't with big companies; it's all made by artisans. Nothing is mass produced."

The handmade wares for sale at the 650-square-foot shop include hand-woven lace, ceramic pottery, jewelry, clothing, furniture, paintings, wall hangings, linens, and many other decor items.

"My passion is to bring my culture here to Spokane," she says.

Deus says she got the idea for the business when she was working in social services in isolated communities in Brazil, where many of the artisans live whose work is now featured in her shop.

The store sells items that come from six of Brazil's 27 states, and Deus say she hopes one day to have all of the states represented here with different items from each one.

"I already knew some of the artisans from my work before, but I wanted to show different states," she says. "Brazil is so rich (in art) and we have a lot of handcrafts."

She says the six states where she gets her inventory are scattered throughout the country.

"That is what I try to do because I don't want to concentrate too much in one area because I wouldn't have as much variation," she says.

The shop sells pieces made by ceramic pottery makers from Deus's native state, Minas Gerais, in south-central Brazil. The pottery includes cups, fruit dishes, and various decorative pieces, which all are hand-painted with designs that Deus says are similar to those the early indigenous people of Brazil painted on their pottery.

She says all of the ceramic pieces are painted with all-natural pigments and dyes and can be used as bakeware.

Intricate, hand-woven laces that she sells come from a state in east-central Brazil near the Atlantic Ocean, called Ceara, which Deus says traditionally has been one of Brazil's richest areas for art and has been known for its lace-making since the mid-1800s when it exported laces to European countries.

She says the art of lace-making there is passed down from generation to generation, but because many of the young women now are seeking jobs elsewhere rather than staying in the small villages there, it's becoming somewhat of a lost art.

Some of the lace pieces at Casa Brazil are very intricate. Deus says they were made by putting together separate pieces created by a number of women because of the time it takes to make the lace by hand.

Because of the time and effort that goes into such pieces, some of the larger and more intricate pieces can cost more than $100, she says. The lace items for sale at Casa Brazil include doilies, table cloths, table runners, and elaborate shawls and wraps.

Deus's store also sells furniture made from a thick, woody vine, called the liana vine, which grows in the Brazilian jungles, she says. The handcrafted pieces she has for sale include tables, chairs, chaise lounges, and love seats. She says the furniture can be used both indoors and out.

Deus says she came to Spokane from Brazil in 1992 when she married and that her two children, Ana and Sammy, were born here. She says they lived here until 2004, when she and the two children left to go back to Brazil, where Deus's family still lives. They stayed there until 2008, and during those four years she worked with the people in small villages in the state of Minas Gerais, where she got to know many of the artisans she now features in her shop here.

She says she and the children moved back to Spokane in late 2008 because her children missed it here. Needing a job, Deus says she came up with the idea for the shop.

"I loved what I was doing in Brazil with my people, so I put (the idea) together with everything I had—the people I worked with and their art and it became my money-maker," she says.

Deus says she spent all of 2009 making preparations for the shop, traveling to Brazil twice—for three months each time—to meet with the artisans there and select the wares she wanted to bring back to Spokane.

She says the first time she went, she rented a shipping container which she filled with enough items to stock the store for a year. Having sold the house she and her children were living in during the four years they spent in Brazil, she says she used most of that money to start the business.

The shipping container took three months to get to Seattle from a coastal city in Brazil on the Atlantic Ocean, after which it traveled from Seattle to Spokane by truck she says, arriving here in June of last year.

Because of street repair work that was done on Northwest Boulevard last summer and fall, Deus says the first months after the store opened in August were slow.

"The container took so long to get here once it was already packed, and then when it got here, the street was closed and not many people came by because of that," she says.

Deus says she thinks that business was slow starting out also because she didn't have much money to invest in advertising early on, but that she plans to start focusing more on that now. The store has a Facebook page and a website, www.minhacasabrazil.com, which also features products for sale.

At the end of this year, Deus says she expects to travel back to Brazil to load up another shipping container to keep the store full for the coming year, but she adds that she has contacts with some of the artisans there who can send her specific items until then if she needs them.

She says on her second three-month trip to Brazil in 2009, she spent time working with the artisans to make sure they knew how to package and ship items to her, because there had been some issues with delicate ceramic items breaking during shipping. She says she also had to instruct them on how to correctly fill out required exportation paperwork.

Since she shared her idea for the store with the artists in the small, remote villages of Brazil, Deus says she's had many new artisans contact her about selling their items in her shop.

She says that most of the people in the isolated communities are poor and have no source of income other than selling their handmade wares, so she feels proud to be helping them make a living by bringing their products here to sell for them.

"I really want to help these people, but I have to think about what's going to sell," she says.

Because business has been slow during the winter months, Deus says she's started a second job, working at a new Brazilian restaurant in Coeur d'Alene, The Grille from Ipanema, helping decorate its interior with some of the authentic pieces featured in her shop. She says after the restaurant opens she'll work there as a server, and her 17-year-old daughter Ana will run the shop here in the evenings while she's gone.

Because Casa Brazil is Deus's first business and it's still not yet a year old, she says she wants to make sure she and her family can survive financially with just the shop.

For now, Deus says she is mostly focusing on bringing more customers into the store through advertising and sharing the art of Brazil with as many people as she can.

She says one day she hopes to add other cultural aspects of Brazil to the business, such as music, books, and possibly food. Her biggest goal, she says, is for the city of Spokane to host a Brazilian festival.

"I really want to put myself out to Spokane," she says. "Spokane gave me my kids, and I want to give Brazil to Spokane."