By John Robshaw
Textile artisan & globally-inspired designer

Design Inspiration
Every journey that I make to India I always find new and wonderful inspirations for my designs. My love of the local artisans' fabric-making traditions, whether - dyed, printed, woven, stitched, worn - will always be a lifelong fascination. Let me share with you my design inspiration and how all of this beautiful work is created.

It's so simple and natural. You touch a woodblock to wet clay and then to the fabric. After the clay dries, you dip the cloth into the indigo vat and the clay stays on. One dip gives the fabric a sky-blue color, two dips and it deepens to cobalt, three dips and it's a saturated midnight blue. Then the fabric is laid out to dry in the sun and later the clay is washed off. The dyer says the indigo vats are like a mistress as they need constant attention. I was completely fascinated by the dyeing and printing processes, as well as how the finished product is used. Textiles become intimate companions in daily life, whether as a pillow, bedcover or sarong.

My forays into Asia have taken me to the villages of Gujarat and Rajasthan to work alongside artisans and study their traditional printing methods; from court batiks in Yogakarta, Indonesia; to block printed sarongs alongside a family who has been printing for four generations; to vegetable-dyed ikats in Thailand. In India, I found that one could apply a painterly aesthetic to the traditional method of block-printing by mixing up patterns and overlapping them in a more formally artistic way. From this my signature look was crafted: an updated spin on the exotic, handmade object; a vibrant mix of sophistication and romantic allure.

I want all the colors, processes and designs from each culture to blend. I redesign them and mix up the processes in ways no one has ever done before. I try to edit them, learn from them, make them my own but retain their essence. In pairing these designs and techniques with each other or with my own ideas, what emerges is new and fresh, and yet retains that sense of tradition, of the handmade.

When I travel to India, there are various special workshops we work with. My travels to India are now several months out of the year to oversee production, experiment with new dyeing and printing techniques, and to work alongside the artisans creating the fabrics. I take care to cultivate and preserve their traditional techniques.

During my time in India, I get to become a minor character in the lives of the people I work with, and I can take inspiration from what I see and do there. I go to their weddings, celebrate their festivals, I get sick with them, I develop relationships with the people who are teaching me. When you look at my textiles, it's like you've been on the world tour along with me.