Design with a conscience

Some of the most exciting designs in homewares right now aren’t coming from big-name brands in Milan or London; instead, they’re being created in small villages in places such as Rajasthan in India and communities in Vietnam.

Here, traditional artisans are working with savvy Westerners who are thinking up new and modern ways to use their handicrafts. And it’s a thriving business model – not a charity – that’s looking after the welfare of families in the Third World.

One of the pioneers of this East-meets-West design is the owner of Ruby Star Traders, Karin Gardiner, who has been working with traditional artisans in India for 16 years. Her pieces are not only sold in her Glebe store but are snapped up by hundreds of other boutiques around Australia.

This week, Gardiner is launching several show-stopping ranges at Furnitex, a design trade fair in Melbourne; hand-sewn quilts made from recycled cotton saris by women in West Bengal and the Singh area near the Pakistan border are being applied by Gardiner as upholstery on French-style furniture.

Traditionally, village women have sewn the quilts, or gudris, for use in their own homes. Using them as upholstery?

“Well, that’s where we’re having fun with them,” says Alyce Devlin, Ruby Star Traders’ national sales manager.

Also new is a range of upholstered French-style furniture using fabrics that are printed using hand-held blocks in the centuries-old manner employed by artisans in Jaipur.

Thanks to renewed interest in these ethnic textiles, the artisans of Jaipur recently formed their own printing guild and are registering copyrights on their printing blocks. It’s a healthy sign that these craftsmen and women, far from being impoverished Third-World labourers, have developed a worldly savviness about their skills.

“Craft is such a trend,” says David Heimann, the co-owner of Sydney homewares stores Orson & Blake, of the rediscovery of artisan-based design. “And there’s going to be more and more.”

What’s driving the trend? “I believe that when it comes to creating environments for themselves, people are choosing items with purpose, meaning and soul,” Heimann says.

He is launching at Furnitex a collection of rope cushions made in Delhi by deserted Muslim women who are taught the macrame-like hand-knotting techniques. The work enables them to put their children through school.

Meanwhile, chic new handmade pots are being created in Jaipur using a stripped-down version of traditional Indian ceramic work. Without the fancy patterns, Western eyes can appreciate the handmade forms. These come from a program established by one of Mother Teresa’s former helpers, in which the potters work from home.

“This supports family life,” Heimann says. “The men don’t need to leave the village for long periods of time to work in faraway factories and it cultivates tradition, which is vital in Indian life.”

“We call them satellite factories,” says Kerryn Haig, owner of Equator Homewares, which has been doing similar business in Vietnam for 12 years, making woven-fibre homewares with a modern twist.

Haig works across the country, with different villages that specialise in using different materials – “seagrass in the north outside of Hanoi and water hyacinth in the south”, she explains.

“It’s a fantastic way to work because people can work with their families. I love working with those community factories because there are just really skilled workers in those communities.”

The baskets woven in these village factories are just one part of Equator’s extensive range of sustainable homewares, yet Haig is taken by our seemingly inexhaustible appetite for modern hand-woven storage.

The upside of this, she says, is “we keep communities going with the work that we do”.

Meanwhile, new Sydney-based homewares brand The Outpost Trading Company supplies luxury textiles made by village weavers in South Africa. From mohair rugs to cotton towels and luxury bedlinen, the textiles are sourced by owner Edith Brown from factories that teach marketable skills such as spinning and weaving to villagers and farmhands, who can earn more money this way than as farm labourers.

But these are no tribal textiles, for they are finished to exacting, modern standards.

The result is five-star-hotel luxury made with a conscience. As one factory owner, Stuart Holding, says, “there is honesty and humanity in our fabrics”.

All of these products are being exhibited at Furnitex, starting today at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, furnitex.com.au.

Useful addresses

Ruby Star Traders 10 Bridge Road, Glebe, 9518 7899, rubystartraders.com.

Equator Homewares 137 Bridge Road, Glebe, 9571 5000, equatorhomewares.com.

Orson & Blake 483 Riley Street, Surry Hills, 8399 2525, orsonandblake.com.au.

The Outpost Trading Company available Turn Around Designs, 4 Princes Street, Turramurra, 9144 5850, outpost-trading.com.au.

Key trends to pay attention to

Design with a conscience is part of an increasing shift towards people making more thoughtful purchasing decisions. Linda O’Keeffe (pictured), former creative director of US magazine Metropolitan Home, who is a guest speaker at Furnitex, gives her view on some emerging trends:

– “Modern” has lovingly hogged the design spotlight in recent years and we’ve grown accustomed to light-filled spaces furnished with mid-20th-century furniture. The downside is that “modern” now feels generic. As a result, there’s a strong movement towards more individualised interior design, one that mixes periods and provenances.

– Individual style can be defined as a “well-edited anything goes”, with the emphasis on “well-edited”. But there’s a big difference between well-edited and spare.

– We see spaces being used less formally, with one exception. More than ever, kitchens are considered to be the focal point of the home and often moonlight as formal dining rooms, so they are looking swankier than ever.

– Nowadays, downsizing is a perennial topic of conversation. Not just for the budget-conscious or for empty-nesters but as a philosophical choice. The modernism mantra of “less is more” is being replaced by “I have enough”.