The atelier

Small works, made slowly,
for quiet rooms

Everything here is counted cross-stitch worked by hand on hand-woven Kumaoni linen. A cushion face takes between nine and fourteen days. We would rather you bought one thing and kept it thirty years.

View in your space

Put it in the room
before you buy it

Choose a piece, choose a room, and drag it where it would actually go. Everything is shown at its real size against the room — a 45cm cushion face and a 180cm runner are not the same object, and this will not pretend they are.

THE STUDY A desk under a window PHOTOGRAPH TO COME THE VERANDAH Open to the valley PHOTOGRAPH TO COME THE DINING TABLE Overhead, midday PHOTOGRAPH TO COME THE LIVING ROOM Late afternoon PHOTOGRAPH TO COME THE BEDROOM Early morning PHOTOGRAPH TO COME THE HALLWAY A narrow wall PHOTOGRAPH TO COME

A drawn plan, real photographs, and your piece at its true size in each of them. Sizes come from the measurement on the product and the scale of the room — not from a guess.

In rooms

The same corner,
three kinds of weather

Late afternoon · ruby on cream
Late afternoon · ruby on cream
Monsoon afternoon · moss on cream
Monsoon afternoon · moss on cream
Dusk · one lamp lit
Dusk · one lamp lit

Linen is not one colour. It takes whatever light the room is giving it, which is the argument for putting a piece where you actually sit rather than where it photographs best.

One cushion face

Eleven thousand crosses,
one at a time

Scroll, and the linen fills at roughly the rate it fills in life — if a life were nine to fourteen days long and you were watching all of it.

Hand-woven cotton-linen before any thread has gone into it
The same linen carrying finished counted cross-stitch in dusty ruby
0 crosses worked day one
From thread to doorstep

What happens between
your order and your hallway

  1. Linen is cut in Satoli
    01

    Linen is cut in Satoli

    Hand-woven cotton-linen from a weaving family two valleys over, cut and hemmed in the finishing room, then walked or driven out to whoever is next on the rota.

  2. Nine to fourteen days of stitching
    02

    Nine to fourteen days of stitching

    Worked at home, in daylight, around everything else a day in the hills contains. A 45cm cushion face is roughly eleven thousand individual crosses.

  3. Checked against the light
    03

    Checked against the light

    Every piece is inspected by the lead finisher against the window. Anything she would not have in her own room goes back, and the maker is still paid for the work.

  4. Wrapped, signed, sent
    04

    Wrapped, signed, sent

    Pressed, folded in unbleached tissue, tied with cotton tape, and slipped with a card carrying the maker's name and village. No plastic anywhere in the parcel.

A cane tray of embroidery skeins in ruby, gold and grey-green