We find ourselves asked a lot, What is block printing and why do you do it?

There are endless ways of applying pattern and colour to cloth, and many of them are not very appealing, usually just suitable for producing huge volumes of fabric but without much charm.

Block printing is a very slow, and peaceful process, achieved without the use of machines or big industry. One of the many reasons we love to block print is the people involved.  First there is the block-maker, who takes a piece of seasoned sheesham wood and works away at it with his tools, tapping, carving and finely chiseling the wood until he is left with an intricately shaped pattern that will be one piece of the printing puzzle.

Every colour you can see on the cloth was made using a separate hand carved block.  The simplest designs are one colour.  Our most complicated pattern has 14 individual blocks. When the block printers begin working with a new set of wood blocks, they have to learn how they all fit together to create a seamless print, how much pressure to use, how much pigment to apply to achieve the most balanced and beautiful result.

To us, block print is the closest thing to hand-painting a piece of fabric. Every stamp of the block produces a unique mark on the cloth. which means every Daydress will be unique. We love working with the inherent restrictions of this art form, finding new ways to develop our ideas using the limitations as inspiration rather than restriction.

You can watch a short film of our block printers in action on the homepage