The Craft
How it is made
Almost everything we sell is slow to make. Here is what that actually means, in the order it happens.
01
Carving the block
A motif is drawn, then cut into a seasoned teak block by hand — the raised parts print, the rest is chiselled away. A single repeating pattern can need four or five blocks, one for each colour. A good block, looked after, prints for years.
02
Making the colour
Indigo comes from a plant left to ferment in a vat, and only turns blue when it meets air. Madder root gives rose, turmeric gives yellow, pomegranate rind gives a soft gold. Natural dye is never twice identical, which is the honest reason no two of our pieces match exactly.
03
Printing by hand
The block is pressed into the dye tray and then onto the cloth, and the printer moves down the length of the fabric lining up each impression by eye. Hundreds of presses for one kurta. Look closely and you will find the places where the hand landed a little differently.
04
The needle work
Where a piece calls for embroidery, it is worked by hand — a neckline, a border, a pallu. This is the slowest part of all and the reason some pieces take weeks rather than days.
05
Washing and finishing
The cloth is washed to set the colour and soften the hand, then checked, pressed and finished. Natural dyes settle a shade in the first wash. That is the fabric behaving exactly as it should.
None of this can be hurried, and none of it can be done by a machine without losing the thing that makes it worth having. That is the whole argument for buying handmade.