Creating with colour, African-style
Creating with textiles is exciting, stimulating and satisfying. Ask any textile artist, quilter, decor designer, uphosterer, costumer or tailor.
But your creative choices - material, weave, texture, design, pattern, provenance and especially colour - can sometimes be daunting.
In this new section of our website, we hope we can help solve your dilemmas.
We've brought together fabrics and other items from across our website and across Africa into colour themes like Sunrise, Rainforest, Savannah, River, Pure Indigo, Sunset and Night.
Choosing colours and fabrics could never be easier.
Fishing boat, Bakau, The Gambia © Robert IrwinLanga Lapu Sunprint Rainbow © Pru Bolus
Sunrise
It's a new dawn. Golden orange light splashes across the land. The rising sun brings new life, new opportunities and new challenges.
Capture the warmth with our African Sunrise palette of colours.
Rainforest
Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Reflect on that perpetual stillness with our African Rainforest palette of colours.
Savannah
Almost nothings says 'Africa' like the silhoutte of a lone cheetah surveying the savannah from atop a barren kopi. Out there, deep in the swaying grasses, there is life and there is death and the never-ending cycle of renewal.
Explore that essence of Africa with our African Savannah palette of colours.
River
All across Africa, water sustains life.
Trickling streams become vast rivers: the Nile, Niger, Gambia, Zambezi and incomparable Congo.
Sustain your creative spirit with our African River palette of colours.
Pure Indigo
Indigo, in many respects, is the colour of Africa. From Tuareg nomads - the blue men of the desert - protected from the elements by their indigo-dyed tagelmusts or turbans. To flowing, swirling skirts of indigo Shwe Shwe from South Africa.
Play the African blues with our Pure Indigo palette of colours.
Sunset
In Africa, the sun sets fast. One moment, it's day. And a moment later - after a brief kaleidoscope of colour - it's night.
Hold onto those last rays of light and warmth with our African Sunset palette of colours.
Night
We think of night as pure darkness: the absence of light, devoid of colour. But night is more subtle than that. Pause. Wait. Adjust.
Behold our African Night palette of colours.