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LIMITED EDITION: Tribal Textiles + Patternity launch "Crackle Connections"
TRIBAL TEXTILES + PATTERNITY
CRACKLE CONNECTIONS - LAUNCHING SEPTEMBER 2018!
An exclusive homeware and lifestyle collaboration between global pattern pioneers PATTERNITY and Zambian Artisans TRIBAL TEXTILES. The collection launches in September 2018 exclusively at Selfridges and online for the London Design Festival.
About the collaboration:
United by a shared love of pattern, craft and community; PATTERNITY were invited to Zambia to meet the artisan makers of TRIBAL TEXTILES. The collaboration celebrates the traditional process of starch batik, where the crackle pattern has been reimagined through PATTERNITY’s lens, resulting in beautiful, bold, hand painted and made pieces.
About the designs:
Inspired by their research trip, PATTERNITY co-founders Anna and Grace found inspiration in the details and textures of nature of Zambia; the crackle pattern repeated in the skin of elephants, tree bark and hot earth, whilst the geometric shapes appeared on the chalk boards at the Malimba school and in the buckets taken to collect water from the local bore hole.
A modern approach to traditional techniques:
The starch batik process originated in Zimbabwe and Zambia, and TRIBAL TEXTILES have been using it since they began, 25 years ago. Learning the heritage and the technique from the team of artisans, PATTERNITY’s inspirations and experiments form the foundations of the collaboration.
Bringing together bold geometry with serendipitous crackle patterns, the range features homewares and lifestyle pieces in monochrome, dusk pink, blue dawn and elephant grey. The collection will be available online in the UK, US and Europe.
Patterns with purpose:
TRIBAL TEXTILES provides living wage jobs for over 100 makers, empowering artisans and supporting conservation, education and the local community. A percentage of Crackle Connections purchases will go to supporting rural education programmes in Zambia and local conservation initiatives.
All products are hand made in Zambia from 100% cotton sourced from southern Africa. The collaboration utilises traditional flour and water starch techniques, non-toxic paints and the heat of the African sun.
Planeterra Blog - Tribal Textiles
It’s a journey in itself to get to the Mfuwe Village, nestled in the Eastern Province of Zambia, whether you take a car, bus, or plane. Nearly 10 hours by road from Lusaka, or a one-hour flight, one gets the impression straight away that they are in the middle of nowhere. With Mfuwe’s proximity to South Luangwa National Park, famous for its herds of elephants, scores of lion and regular leopard sightings, it’s hard to find a place as beautiful as this.
The beauty, and wildlife, have all created a perfect arena for tourism in South Luangwa National Park, which boasts a plethora of lodges, and more than 45,000 annual visitors – the most of any national park in Zambia. Despite its remoteness, there is a vibrant tourism economy here, and the Mfuwe Airport is constantly receiving flights of travellers eager to take in the safari experience.
Nestled between this airport and the park’s gate is Tribal Textiles, a workshop and bustling business that employs more than 100 Mfuwe locals. With an impressive corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, countless staff benefits, and a social enterprise model, it’s hard to imagine a business as socially conscious.
“South Luangwa is really benefitting from tourism a lot,” says Nsabila Njobvu, Tribal Textile’s Retail Manager, who has been working at the social enterprise for more than seven years. “The higher the number of tourists that we are receiving, the more poverty is decreasing because people have jobs and they are able to take children to school, able to afford a basic meal every day.”
However, Tribal Textiles is constantly attempting to tear travellers off the road, or away from the lodges nestled far within the national park. As a result, they are regularly finding new ways of marketing their products, and last year they launched a new restaurant in an attempt to acquire tourists on their way to and from the airport. The restaurant, named the Courtyard Café, is run by local entrepreneur and chef, Dorica, who also runs a restaurant in the village.
“Before the restaurant, I had to go do farming in a nearby village to get money,” explains Dorica, who balances her new café at Tribal Textiles, and a restaurant run at her home in the village. “I am happy, very happy, because sometimes that side when there’s no business, at least here [at Tribal Textiles] you’ll find I have customers so I am able to take care of my family and to keep my business going,” Dorica explains. Not only is her restaurant and the Courtyard Café bringing income to her family, she has also been able to onboard staff as a result of the café’s success.
In fact, Tribal Textiles is employing many women – so much so, that Dorica and Nsabila both mention how empowered they feel by the opportunities given to them by Tribal Textiles. As they grow, the business expands their social enterprise model. Many proceeds from the products sold at the showroom go to initiatives such as Conservation South Luangwa (CSL), the Malimba School, and the Hanada Orphanage. The business has also opened a Community Artisans’ Market, to provide local artists with a space to sell their handicrafts.
Tribal Textiles is the perfect example of a business expanding as tourism increases, and with their social enterprise model and passion for giving back to the community of Mfuwe, they are set to remain an important part of the safari experience for travellers, all while empowering the local community to earn a sustainable living.
https://planeterra.org/stories-from-the-field/zambian-social-enterprise-empowers-rural-community/
Tribal Drum - July 2018
THE TRIBAL DRUM
July 2018
We’ve had an exciting few months at Tribal since the reopening of the workshop in March after the rains. There was so much going on that we’ve been quieter than usual on emails, but here we are!!!
And with brand new bright t-shirts that our staff are so proud to wear every day.
EXPANDING IN NORTH AMERICA
At the beginning of last year, we told you how we had successfully achieved our largest export order ever to the US (remember the picture of 1,5 ton of hand-painted textiles in carton boxes piled up to the workshop’s roof?!).
Now, we are working on a new level of expansion in North America and thrilled to start collaborating with two wonderful wholesalers: Swahili Imports and Global Girlfriend.
Both companies have been in existence for a long time and promoting artisans work from around the world.
But their founders - Leslie and Stacey - only came to Zambia this year, under the patronage of PEP Zambia - an organization that works with small and medium enterprises to promote the Zambian artisan craft sector to the export market (amongst other sectors).
We spent time developing new design ranges and product lines for them, that they will unveil on their booths at the NY Now tradeshow in August.
It’s great to know that they will distribute those to their clients, shipping directly from the US in a few days! This will enable smaller stockists that were unable to meet our minimum order requirement, to now stock Tribal Textiles.
WE ARE IN LOVE WITH TEAL!
We are also excited to introduce our gorgeous new Moroccan Tiles design! After our founder Gillie was inspired by a trip to Morocco, she created this fabulous new line of striking, bold, and elegant patterns.
Moroccan Tiles captures the beauty of geometric and floral patterns commonly featured in Arabic art around the world, in a subtle colour palette of teals and greys.
We love teal so much that we decided to add a teal colourway to our bestselling Various Animals range. Such a fresh look, isn’t it ?
Both designs are available in our complete range of products - including cushions, table & bed linen, wall hangings and accessories – or as meterage.
For more wholesale information, contact sales@tribaltextiles.co.zm any time!
All the best for now from the Tribal Team!
The Tribal Drum - November 2017
THE TRIBAL DRUM
NOVEMBER 2017
It’s been an exciting couple of months since our last Tribal Drum and we’ve got lots of news to share before the rains start.
We are very proud to introduce our new shop tribe, located just outside the gates of the South Luangwa National Park. In a very central location, tribe displays a colourful variety of contemporary Zambian and African artisan gifts, in a light and airy space.
It has an educational ‘Conservation corner’ that sells a range of fundraising products for local conservation programs and offers a small taster of the best of Tribal Textiles’ designs.
Working on the outside signage turned out to be yet another interesting experience for our talented head starcher Tiza, stencilling and painting – and managing to keep his unwavering broad grin – while perched on a ladder in the October heat! One more Zambian miracle, congratulations Tiza! Last but not least: we are offering cappuccinos and croissants at tribe, a very “Parisian” treat in the middle of the Africa bush!
Life continues apace at our main workshop as well – with its Artisan Market, Art safaris and Courtyard Café, Tribal Textiles HQ remains the heart of the business and is an invigorating place to spend some time. There’s nothing quite like watching our talented artisans at work with traditional Zambian music pumping out in the background and singing and dancing all around!
Besides construction work, we have been extremely busy fine-tuning stunning new designs, now available for wholesale purchase.
We are thrilled to reveal our new Carnivores range – inspired by the lions, wild dogs and leopards in the South Luangwa National Park. Sales directly support the vital research carried out by the Zambian Carnivore Programme (ZCP), with 25% from each sale going towards ZCP’s great work in Zambia.
And not forgetting the little ones, we’ve created some newbies for children with Stick Animals, our latest kids’ range!
With bright funky colours such as fuchsia, lime, orange and teal and a contemporary twist, this design will transform children’s rooms into a playful domestic safari park. Be ready to welcome elephants, giraffes, zebras and warthogs into your home!
For wholesale information, please contact sales@tribaltextiles.co.zm.
With temperatures reaching nearly 45 degrees, our brains - and creativity - have been boiling accordingly and we have developed a whole exciting new range of products: door stops, hammocks, bean bags, oven mitts...
But one of our favourite new creations is our beautiful banana paper cards – block printed designs decorated with traditional Zambian fabrics and artefacts. The organic banana paper is made by One Planet Café - right next door to Tribal Textiles. We started with bush animals and have moved onto wonderful silhouettes, working with our creative staff to embellish the cards with small scraps of traditional chitenge fabrics and natural feathers.
The ingenuity and imagination of our lovely ladies here at Tribal Textiles now amazes us every day, with our shop assistant Christine being by far the most creative!
These unique handmade cards are sold in our shop in a variety of animals and people. If you fancy sending unusual and fairtrade greetings cards, they are also now available to buy on our online shop https://shop.tribaltextiles.co.zm/.
The paper, made from recycled Zambian banana fibres, is WFTO (World Fair Trade Organization) verified and processed in traditional Japanese Washi-factories, constructed here in the Zambian bush, to use as little energy, water and chemicals as possible in the process.
All the best for now (and the end of the year) from the Tribal Team!
Tribal Drum - July 2017
THE TRIBAL DRUM
JULY 2017
It’s been an exciting couple of months at Tribal and we’ve got lots of news to share.
It’s been an exciting couple of months at Tribal and we’ve got lots of news to share. In our last newsletter, we were hard at work with our biggest export order yet. We’re extremely proud to say that we managed to complete and send off to the US, in record time, over one and a half tonnes of beautiful Tribal Textiles cushion covers!
The experience was a huge learning curve for us all and our target wouldn’t have been achieved without incredible team efforts. We are extremely grateful to our staff for their dedication and look forward to producing more bumper sized orders in the future!
In September last year we attended our very first tradeshow (the Trade + Impact summit) held in Morocco. This event introduced us to a lot of great contacts and even led to the big order to the US at the beginning of the season.
This year, we decided to go bigger: we’re going to New York in August. Yes, the Big Apple! We will attend NY NOW - one of the biggest tradeshows in interior decoration - in their Artisan Resource section, an area of the show that showcases artisan groups from all over the world. We will fill our bags with as many beautiful Tribal samples as possible, ready to show them to the thousands of attendees and buyers.
Our founder Gillie stopped by a few weeks ago and came up with an array of new contemporary designs for us to showcase there! We’ll definitely keep you posted with more news and pictures in upcoming newsletters but we can already say that she has been very inspired and productive!
We didn’t just stop at new designs. We also recently launched a new product: Tribal’s very own fabric storage pots! Like babushkas, they come in various sizes, colours and prints and you can stack them inside one another or fill them individually with anything you like – from plants to pens! We got really positive feedback about them on social media and are looking forward to seeing how sales will be in our shops.
Whilst it’s great to be busy with orders and shows on the International stage, we still love nothing more than seeing Tribal’s décor around camps and lodges in the South Luangwa valley.
Kafunta Safaris recently added a wonderful new tented camp to their portfolio – Three Rivers Camp. We hope you also love how stylish our screen-printed cushion covers look in their tents!
If you follow us on social media (which we hope you do), you probably know our latest great addition… we opened a café! That’s right, not only can you tour our workshop, browse for products in the shop or paint your own cushion covers during an Art Safari. Now you can also indulge in a delicious meal or simply enjoy a drink at The Courtyard Café.
Of course, we had to test out the café ourselves before opening it up to the public and we can confirm that the food prepared by the local legend Dorica is absolutely delicious! With tasty food and more beautiful textiles, we’re confident there’s more exciting news ahead and we’ll keep you updated in our next Tribal Drum.
All the best for now from the Tribal team!
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