The New York Times has an interesting (and heavily emailed) article today on Etsy-based small businesses. The story focuses on the craft angle but of course the site is also great for vintage pieces, including textiles. The image above is a detail of a vintage Ralli quilt currently for sale; the seller’s item description includes a nice write-up on what Ralli quilts are.

Seema Krish’s debut collection is called Bombay Bliss and includes six patterns made in a range of fibers and techniques. There are pillows and throws — and fabric by the yard is coming next.

Via Interior Desisgn magazine’s “Market Tabloid” issue, 10/31/09.

The website for Zena Kruzick Tribal Art features a diverse selection of non-Western textiles that includes this early 20th century “body cloth” from Nagaland India (detail shot above). The website also has a short bibliography of recommended textile-related books as well as a great long list of links to other tribal art dealers, sites I’ll be happily exploring in the days ahead.

A carry-over discovery from my previous post is that David Earp’s charity Shuktara supplies handmade textiles to Dosa, a company started by clothing designer Christina Kim. Part of Kim’s creative mission is to recycle and reuse fabrics to the maximum degree possible and she accomplishes this beautifully in her work with jamdani fabrics from India. (I think a safe / simple definition of jamdani is that it’s a very finely woven cotton, typically used for saris.)

Dosa’s website isn’t set up for linking directly to individual pages but if you’d like to read more about the history of jamdani (very interesting!) and how Dosa is using it today go to the home page, then “special projects”, then “life of jamdani”.

RRR’s website is now up and running (or rolling I should say!) and full of great patterns and colors at prices that don’t hurt to look at, budget priorities and disposable income aside. All of her fabrics are hand block printed in India and dried in the sun.

Above, a “fish orange” quilt.

Above is a detail shot of a vintage 12′ x 15′ carpet from the Agra region of India,  for sale at Mansour. Both the intense color and all-over symmetrical pattern make the piece quite striking and fresh. (Maybe it’s the summer heat but deep cool colors like this seem especially irristible at the moment.)

It’s been almost exactly a year (already!) since my first post on Mansour carpets and I find myself doing a second post now on another of their vintage  (rather than contemporary) pieces. Their Mansour Modern division has some wonderful designs but it always seems to be the older one-of-a-kind items that feel more like a find, though of course without custom capabilities.

On another note (practical but useful): Mansour has a section on “Regional Histories” worth checking out.  Here you can read an explanation of “Agra” as associated with the carpet above.

A helpful comment received today on a previous dhurrie-related post points me to The Maharaja Tent Company (or just “The Maharaja Company” depending where you look on the site, though I prefer the sound of the former). In any case, they’re fabricators of Indian dhurries and “bespoke Raj style Indian tents”. Some dhurries are kept in stock and custom orders in standard sizes and colors can be produced quite quickly — three weeks according to the website. They can make full-on custom pieces too. They also have antique dhurries, like the one pictured above. I’ll leave the tents (glorious as they are) for separate exploration.

Designer Sally Campbell has produced her own line of “village made” textiles from India. Lots of colorful items and even a few neutrals. She also has a section of vintage pieces.

In the world of design-related blogging there are few things more tantalizing than finding a print article that’s dedicated to an area of interest, richly photographed and capped off with a pertinent website. So when I saw this article in The New York Time’s Summer 2009 travel magazine this weekend about the Jaipur-based company Anokhi I wasted no time in tearing it out. But alas, Anokhi’s website doesn’t give you much to look at — just a long list of shops and stockists. The US supplier does have a site that gets you closer to the product, but no fabric by the yard. Though I shouldn’t complain: they do sell scarves and at such generous sizes and prices one could really do a lot with them.

From Time magazine’s April 2009 review of noteworthy green design: “Richly colored bedding from Rajboori combines jacquard weaves with geometric patterns and uses an exclusively developed silk, derived via a sustainable process that leaves silkworms unharmed.”

www.rajboori.com