Blog — Family

Growing up with grey icy, ivory, and white tones in Sweden, the most exotic and colorful places were the ones that attracted me the most.  After a short stop at a fashion school in Paris, I found myself in India.   I ended up in Jaipur, to be more exact, the Pink City.  No one depicts the magic of India better than Tim Walker.  It is exactly as mad, messy, magical, and happy as it seems.   My work with colors started when I worked for the French jewelry designer  Marie Helene De Taillac when my everyday work, was to select gemstones in perfect color nuances.   Living in our own dream palace, I met Nur and Deborah, who were great sources of encouragement...

Today we are on a journey with Priti of Craft Boat.  Priti always wanted to see design as a way of life, she would train herself every day to go deeper into its fundamental elements and principles.  She believes that her role at Craft Boat, the brand that she established herself, is to facilitate a stage for the artisans which she works with to shine. For her design team to connect the dreams of other artists with the artisans. She does much more than just that we can tell you!  We worked with her on several pieces, such as the wonderful Stationery Trunks.   You are a bit of an octopus, doing and managing so many things at the same time, can you...

Today we meet the wonderful Brigitte Singh.  Her story is straight out of a fairy tale book.  We have always been in love with Brigitte's work and prints, so we jumped on the chance to work and collaborate with her.  Some pieces we bought directly from her, like her wonderful coats and quilts.  And on other pieces, we worked with her on creating new shapes using her beautiful textiles.  What was amazing when we launched her line, a lot of local clients were happy to access her again.  As they told us there was a shop in Kuwait that used to sell her work in the nineties!  Let's meet this treasure of a woman.    What year did you arrive...

Today we are introducing Deborah De Fiore, graphic designer and art director extraordinaire, who has been collaborating with ecru from the inception of the brand in 2013.  We are constantly working with her from communication plans to art direction, to creating beautiful stationery for ecru.  Let's get to know Deborah a little better.   You are all over ecru, can you tell us more about this!   I remember when I met Nur at Gem Palace, Jaipur, it was 14 years ago.  At the time I was working for the jewelry designer Marie Helene de Taillac, and Nur started to work for Munnu Kasliwal.  We were three girls from Paris, Stockholm, Beirut working in Jaipur.   We quickly became friends and moved...

This week we are introducing you to, and getting to know our collaborators a little better.  Today we meet Zeenat who collaborated with her on Dancer Cocktail Napkins and the Memory Album.  Let's get to know Zeenat a little better.   Zeenat Kulavoor is a Typographer + Graphic Designer based in Bombay. She specializes in Urdu type, lettering, and calligraphy. She intends to change the perception towards the use of Urdu in India - which is widely perceived to be limited to religious usage. Using tongue-in-cheek humor and wit, combined with the use of scale and varied printmaking methods, Zeenat is working towards reinventing possibilities of how the script can be a part of regular day to day life. She also works...

The importance of sharing beauty and food, even virtually, has never been so highlighted.  Enjoying and savoring these precious gifts is a constant reminder that we are the fortunate ones.  It is part of our culture to share and to help those who are less fortunate.  We know and are very proud to see, so many helping those in their reach.  Nothing is more important now.  If you are interested in sharing with those slightly farther we have compiled a list of organizations we trust and believe in as suggestions. India NGOs & Charities  Talab Khan - A fund to help a community of folk musicians and dancers in Rajasthan who normally leave their villages to perform and now are...

Growing up in the Levant I was exposed to the beautiful fabric called ‘sayee’. A bright multicolored, striped fabric with a singular sheen, woven from a blend of cotton and silk, both matt but shiny, difficult to describe. It could be found in every self-respecting Levantine household. My mother had ‘dishdashas’ made from it. It was used for about everything, ranging from furniture upholstery, curtains, cushion covers, quilt covers, book covers to tissue boxes. If you could cover it, you did it with ‘sayee’! I was also lucky to visit Syria often, almost on an annual basis. My parents and godmother were interested by handicrafts. I was exposed to many of Syria’s talented artisans, including to the incredible ‘sayee’ weavers....

Kutch is like no other place I’ve ever seen. Kutch means something which becomes intermittently wet and dry. It's a vast area comprised of hundreds of nomadic tribes who each have their own aesthetic culture and tribal regulation. Kutch existed for centuries on barter systems. Shepherds would give wool to weavers, who in return would weave them in return for extra wool. The area was devastated by a catastrophic earthquake in 2001 that scars it till today. Yet, the people of Kutch have only emerged stronger from the calamity. An array of Indian nonprofit organizations covered the region doing exceptional work to rejuvenate trade and empower the artisans of Kutch.  The artisans weave absolutely every imaginable type of textile, using...

Khadi weaving is a government-subsidized industry created by Mahatma Gandhi in the 1920s. As part of the struggle for independence, Gandhi ji encouraged khadi cotton spinning and weaving to support self-sustainability throughout India. Today every main city has a khadi center, which purchases textiles from weavers all over India and sells it at a subsidized rate.  Khadi is a wonderful and versatile cotton cloth, cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Its handloom weave feel gives it charm and it becomes softer after every washing.  The khadi center, we visited, was an old and sleepy one. The basements were large. You had to make your way through corridors with piles of neatly stored fabrics. What would normally have...

Phulia is located in West Bengal, a few hours drive from Kolkata. It’s a village of weavers who weave almost any type of handloom plain fabrics but specialize in the most intricate jacquard and jamdani textiles. Their meticulous weaving techniques produce feather-light enchanting fabrics, that are soft to the touch and discreetly ornamented.  In the 18th century the French weaver, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, developed the Jacquard programmable loom, a mechanical loom that works on a system of punched cards that compose intricate patterns and in modern times inspired computer coding. Then you have another technique, Jamdani-  blew my mind as it results in some of the most regal textiles I have ever come across. The design process which involves no mechanical...