Studio Notes
Posted 14 March · 6 min read · Woodstock studio
Most first consultations go better when the client arrives with a rough idea of the wall, the room, and how the piece will be used. You do not need a mood board or a colour palette. A phone photo of the space, taken in daylight, tells us more than a paragraph of description ever will.
Bring the measurements if you have them. Width matters most, because a macrame panel is knotted to a specific dowel length and the fringe hangs from there. If the wall is 2.4 metres and the ceiling is low, we will talk about proportion before we talk about pattern. Height is easier to adjust later.
Think about light. A north-facing room in Cape Town reads cool and grey through most of the day, which flattens undyed hemp and pushes indigo toward black. A west-facing wall catches the afternoon sun and warms everything on it. Both are fine, but they change which dye batch we would recommend.
If the piece is for a restaurant, guesthouse or a styled shoot, tell us who else is involved. We have worked alongside interior stylists, floor managers and photographers, and the timeline shifts depending on whether the piece needs to be photographed, installed, or washed regularly. Madder root deepens with every wash, which is worth knowing before you commit to a set of cushion covers.
Finally, bring your questions about care. Natural dyes are not fixed the way synthetic ones are, and a piece that lives near a window will shift over a year or two. That is part of the material, not a fault. We would rather talk it through at the start than have you surprised later.
Naledi has been knotting and dyeing in Woodstock for eleven years. She started with a bucket of onion skins and a length of hemp cord on her kitchen table, and now runs the Saturday sessions for eight people at a time. Most of her week goes into commissions for guesthouses and restaurants, which means she spends a lot of hours matching dye batches to a room's existing light and linen.
She writes the studio's dye notes herself, keeps a running log of madder and indigo results, and teaches the same knotting basics she uses on large panels. If you have read the piece above and want to talk through your own space, she is the person you will be speaking with.
Studio contact
31387 Maree Street
Lake Leigh, FS 6238
For commission enquiries, mention the room, the wall size and whether the light is warm or cool. It saves a round of emails.