The Studio
Threads of Life is about the ancestral worldview of the indigenous peoples of the Indonesian archipelago. We support the continued practice of this wisdom by its custodians, and we share this wisdom with the world. We recognise that this worldview is embodied in and transmitted through the objects of material culture within these traditions, through the ways in which these objects are made, through the rituals associated with their use, and through the oral traditions associated with each of these. We seek to share this wisdom in like manner.
We work directly with over 1000 women weavers on 12 islands across Indonesia, commissioning high-value heirloom- quality textiles and baskets made with local materials and natural dyes, and selling these through our retail gallery in Bali and through our website. The income we bring to the women we work with helps them maintain the dignity of their culture and identity, and make a living while doing so.
We further express our student-hood of these traditions through the production practices of our own artisanal natural dye studio in Bali. Embodying the values and skills we have learned, we hand-make natural dyes by natural processes using sustainably sourced plants purchased from smallholder farmers within communities across the archipelago where we work.