No river too deep, no mountain too high, for this week’s In The Studio we’re jet-setting to India to visit textile designers Safomasi at their New Delhi print house.
Ok, so we may not have flown half way around the world just for a cup of tea and a catch up but we did manage the next best thing by giving Sarah Fotheringham and Maninder Singh, the designer duo behind Safomasi a call.
Having just launched their colourful collection of illustrative home accessories at Heal’s we wanted to learn more about the hand screen printed cushions and quilts as well as see a few snaps of the process in action.
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Where did you both study?
We have quite different backgrounds. I studied illustration at the University of Brighton, whilst Maninder studied commercial cookery and business management in Melbourne. It works as we have different roles – I design and Maninder handles the business and production side of things.
“We’re inspired by our travels, so each
collection tells the story of a
journey to a different place.”
Tell us about the first piece you ever designed together?
‘Mithai’ was our first print, inspired by the huge variety of colours and shapes of Indian sweets seen on our travels around India. It started with felt tip drawings of sweets in my sketchbook that I scanned and arranged into a pattern before separating the colours for screen printing and hand tracing each layer.
The final design featured illustrations of 169 different sweets and was hand printed in 13 colours, simplified from 16. It was a mission! We paired this pattern with a simple candy stripe to make our first range of cushion covers and quilts.
Where is your studio based?
Our studio is in New Delhi, India. We’re on a small but busy street with carpenters and hardware stores either side, so it can get quite dusty and noisy. Thankfully we’re two floors above the chaos with floor to ceiling windows that look out onto a lovely park.
Do you have any studio superstitions?
In India when you purchase a new piece of equipment there is a tradition to do a ‘pooja’ – a ceremony to ‘bless’ the object in the hope that it will bring good luck and perform well. Whenever we get something like a new sewing machine in the studio our tailors will do a small pooja as a good omen!
What is the inspiration behind your designs?
We’re inspired by our travels, so each collection tells the story of a journey to a different place. So far collections have been inspired by journeys around India, Japan, and Salcombe in Devon.
Tell us about your design process, how do you get started?
First of all we decide on a place to theme the collection. If it’s somewhere we haven’t been before we’ll start by taking a trip there. Whilst travelling we’ll sketch, take photographs, and gather our thoughts about which elements best capture our experience of that place.
When we’re back we research some more and come up with concepts for prints, starting with rough sketches before developing them into the final designs on Photoshop and then eventually screens for screen printing. We aim to make products that people feel a connection to – so the scenes in the prints seem familiar to some and exotic to others.
“We aim to make products that people feel a connection
to, so the scenes in the prints seem familiar
to some and exotic to others.”
Do you have a preferred material or process?
We love hand screen printing. It takes time and skill as each colour is printed separately to slowly build up the design. Some of our designs are pretty complex too, with up to 13 colours, but it has such a beautiful quality and character that we feel you can’t achieve with something like digital printing. The first time we sample new designs is the most fun – mixing up the colours and seeing them come to life on a run of fabric
How would you describe the collection?
Our collection at Heal’s takes pieces from our Salcombe collection, which evokes childhood holidays to the Devon town of the same name, and the Alleppey collection inspired by the lush landscape of Kerala, South India.
The prints in the Salcombe collection illustrate country walks along the estuary, families exploring rock pools at low tide and yachts racing around the harbour – nostalgic scenes that will probably be familiar to many British holidaymakers. The ‘Coconut Picker’s’ print from the Alleppey collection is more tropical – with a bold and bright palm tree pattern.