We're sitting down with our favorite merchants to talk about their products, their stories, and just about anything else.
Today: From photograph to finished product, we're learning about the process of designing linens.
Christina Weber is the graphic designer and artist behind Studiopatró, a San Francisco-based line of handprinted kitchen linens. She’s been selling her tea towels in our Provisions shop since the beginning -- and we use them daily in our kitchens.
The meeting of form and function is an important aspect of all our kitchen tools. At Studiopatró, it’s their raison d'être. Christina creates products that are beautiful (hand-printed, fine European linen) and practical (strong, laundry-safe, and they soften with use). And each piece is made with ecologically-friendly materials.
Her towels have been best sellers, and we’re excited to be collaborating on a Food52-inspired design. It began over coffee -- our VP of e-commerce met at a little San Francisco cafe to talk design with Christina. Our request was this: an indigo blue patterned towel, designed just for us.
The resulting sketches ranged from Greek-inspired to polka-dotted. One stood out -- a pattern of 52 interlocking stripes. Christina modeled it after an old weathered photograph of Picasso that she keeps tucked in her notebook. In it, Picasso sports a striped Breton shirt, and rests at a table covered in plaid linen.
The significance of 52 stripes for Food52 -- plus a little Picasso thrown in the mix -- felt right to us. From there, the process of mixing the perfect blue shade of paint, hand-sewing the cloth, and printing the towels began. Studiopatró works with small companies in the Bay area for each piece of the highly specialized process.
Weeks later, we’ve happily unveiled the design on our site. This piece is particularly special -- we find that even the most basic acts of cooking seem more meaningful when you’re using tools with a story and a person behind them.
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