We get asked sometimes: why does it cost what it costs? It's a fair question. And the honest answer is: because of what it takes to make it.
This is the story of one cushion. From the moment the fabric is printed to the moment it arrives at your door.
Stage 1: The printing - It begins in Khushiram's studio in Jaipur. A length of cotton cloth is laid on a long printing table. A craftsman picks up a carved wooden block - the same block that may have been in use for twenty years - dips it in ink, and presses it onto the cloth with his full weight behind it. The block lifts. The next position is measured by eye. And he presses again.
This happens 8 to 12 times, with different blocks, different inks, different layers. Each layer is washed by hand and dried in the Indian sun before the next begins. It takes a full month to print one length of fabric.
Stage 2: The Washing - Between each layer of printing, every length of fabric is washed by hand and hung to dry in the Jaipur sun - a step that happens 8 to 12 times before a single piece is finished, setting the ink, softening the cloth, and letting the colours breathe before the next layer begins. This is not a shortcut process. It is slow by design, and that slowness is exactly what you feel when you hold a DAC piece in your hands.
Stage 3: The Designing - Inside Khushiram's block-printing factory in Jaipur, Anna and Amanda move through washed lengths of fabric like editors - holding textiles to the light, marking up cloth, layering colours against each other with the trained confidence of two designers who know exactly what they're looking for. This is where each collection takes shape: not at a desk, but on the factory floor, in conversation with the artisans, surrounded by the ink and rhythm of a craft that has been practised here for generations.
Stage 4: The stitching village - The printed fabric travels to the stitching village. Here, a team of women - among them Mohini, who you may know from our June newsletter, and her colleagues - cut, pin and hand-stitch each piece. Mohini stitches by day and studies psychology by night. Her colleague Meena has made a quiet promise to herself: her daughter will marry after 20. Not before. These are the hands that finish every piece.
Stage 5: New Zealand - The finished pieces travel to New Zealand. Anna and Amanda check every one. They are sorted, photographed, numbered and listed. Each piece is given an edition number - because no two are ever the same, and the edition number is the proof. Then it travels to you.
Browse the current collection - each piece with its edition number and its story - at designalchemycollective.com