When we go to India, we don't go as buyers.
We go as guests. We sit at the table. We meet the families. We learn the names. And sometimes, if we are lucky, we get invited to celebrate.
This is the story of one of those times. And the man at the centre of it.
The fifth generation
Khushiram Pandey is a fifth-generation block printer from the Chhipa community of Sanganer - a town on the edge of Jaipur that has been the heartbeat of India's hand block printing world for centuries. His family has been printing cloth here for generations, the craft passing from hand to hand the way language passes - not formally taught so much as absorbed, lived, carried.
His father, Awdhesh Pandey, is one of India's most decorated textile artisans. A two-time National Award winner from the Government of India. A man who has devoted his life not just to practising the craft but to sustaining it, teaching thousands of textile students across India, and giving everything to ensure that hand block printing does not quietly disappear in the rush toward faster, cheaper, machine-made alternatives.
Khushiram is the next generation of that story. And rather than simply inherit the craft, he chose to deepen it. He studied at the Indian Institute of Craft and Design in Jaipur, graduating in 2012 with a gold medal for academic excellence. He went on to work with some of India's most respected design names, and in 2023 was chosen by the Danish government as one of just five Indian artisans to lead workshops in Denmark on Sanganeri block printing.
He is, quietly and without fanfare, one of the most significant figures in contemporary Indian block printing.
His studio
Khushiram runs the AK Group studio in Sanganer - many printing tables, over 10,000 hand-carved wooden blocks, and a team of around 30 artisans working on fair-trade terms.
The techniques practised here are among the most demanding in the craft world: Syahi Begar printing, Dabu printing, Indigo Sol printing, vegetable dyeing, natural dye processes. These are not things you learn from a manual. They are things you learn by working alongside someone who already knows them, which is exactly how most of Khushiram's team learned.
His studio also operates with a commitment to responsible environmental practices that most studios in the industry do not share - including water recycling processes, azo-free dyes, and the kind of care for his team and community that you only see when a person genuinely believes that how you make things matters as much as what you make.
His goal, in his own words: to sustain the ancient craft of block printing while giving it a new direction. To keep it alive not by preserving it under glass, but by letting it breathe and evolve.
Holi with the family
On our most recent visit to Jaipur, Khushiram and his family invited us to celebrate Holi with them - not as visitors watching politely from a distance, but as part of the gathering. Family. Workers. Community. All of it.
Flower petals flew. Music played. Anna danced with the women, petals raining down in reds and golds around her. Awdhesh, Khushiram's father, National Award winner, master block printer - threw flowers over us and laughed like we had known each other for years.
Because in the ways that matter, we had.
You cannot manufacture that kind of welcome. You earn it slowly, over visits and meals and conversations and the kind of trust that builds when people see that you are there for the right reasons. We were wearing bindis. We were covered in petals. We were exactly where we were supposed to be.
The fabric behind the fabric
The underprint fabric at the heart of the DAC collection begins in Khushiram's studio. Cloth that absorbs 8 to 12 layers of hand block printing over the course of a month - the background cloth, the layer beneath the layer - traditionally discarded once the finished textile was complete.
We saw it and could not walk past it. Khushiram set it aside for us.
That fabric - rescued, stitched, brought to New Zealand - becomes the cushions, quilts, and tea towels you find at designalchemycollective.com. Every single piece carries his family's hands in it. Five generations. A gold medal. A Holi celebration with flowers in our hair.
Now you know the story behind the piece on your shelf.
Love from Anna and Amanda