African Decor

Share this page:

Jazz up your living space with African textiles and style

Are you looking around your house or apartment thinking, 'How boring. What can I do to liven things up a bit?'

Why not add some African style into your decor?

Some of our fabrics pretty obviously just 'say Africa'. Others - like our Shwe Shwe fabrics from South Africa - are very subtle and work very well in more traditional settings.

Kudhinda upholstered shoe chairs - Phine Maude Davies

Kudhinda fabrics - designed and hand-screened in Zimbabwe - have been used for furnishing and upholstery since Ros Byrne first launched them many years ago.

But we've never seen anything quite like Phine Maude Davies's totally amazing shoe chairs.

So, what makes Kudhinda fabrics so perfect for upholstery?

Ideal furnishing weight - 260 grams per metre, approximately
Robust and long-lasting. We've seen furniture, curtains and housewares that are decades old and still going strong.
Extra wide - 150 cm, approximately
100% cotton, of course
Striking geometric and wildlife motifs
Available in three stunning colourways - perfect to mix 'n' match

View and buy: Kudhinda Zimbabwe screen print fabrics

Kudhinda upholstered shoe chairs © Phine Maude Davies

Left: Ndoro Stripe, Natural colourway Right: Elephant and Headrest, Blue Steel colourway

African fabrics make great curtains

Yup, they sure do - as our creative customers will attest.

Julie Ferguson started out making a block for the Virtual Log Cabin Quilt Project and just kept going... until she had curtains!

Log cabin curtains © Julie Ferguson

African fabric lampshades - Jenny Hall

Jenny hates waste.

She can't walk by a good charity shop.

And she just can't resist a lonely, discarded lampshade crying out for a new home.

Then there's the off-cuts and end-of-line fabrics we have around the shop.

Put 'em all creatively together and there you have Jenny's latest lampshade creations.

View and buy: Lampshades and African home decor

Top left: Tonka Times lampshade

Top right: Niafunke lampshades
Bottom left: Handpainted Batik lampshade
Bottom right: Blue Tiles lampshade

Musa indigo curtains - Jenny Potter

Jenny's done a super job creating these curtains using our indigo fabrics - hand-dyed, of course, by Musa Jaiteh in The Gambia.

For this fabric, Musa uses carved wooden stamps to apply a wax resist, before dipping the fabric in his indigo vat.

View and buy: Hand-dyed indigo fabrics

Musa indigo curtains © Jenny Potter

Timbuktu curtains - Susan Stobbs

African designs are really taking hold in the world of interior design and home decor.

Witness these fantastic curtains by Susan Stobbs.

The fabric she used is from our Woodin Bogolan range, designed and printed by GTP in Ghana.

This is a slightly heavier fabric - 300 grams per metre, approximately - ideal for furnishing applications. 100% cotton, naturally.

Our designs are changing constantly and we've recently unpacked our latest shipment.

View and buy: African furnishing fabrics

Mud cloth chairs - Jenny Hall

What do you do with that scrappy - or is that crappy? - pair of chairs you picked up in the charity shop?

If you're anything like our own Jenny Hall and you can't stand waste, the answer is obvious. You absolutely must give those chairs a new lease on life.

It's not hard. Really. Here's the recipe:

Take an old chair or two
Add a bit of Google and YouTube research
Combine with our genuine mud cloth from Mali
Presto: fantastic, eye-catching chairs for home or office

View and buy: Mud cloth from Mali

Also pictured: Original Jenny Hall lampshade creation and African batik curtains