From palette to pull.
Six stages, all of them carried out by hand, in one garden studio in Karen.
01
Printing palettes
Colour comes first. Every shade is mixed by hand on the table and matched to Pantone formulas by the studio’s colourists, then recorded so the same colourway can be pulled again next season.
02
Screen origination
Artwork is drawn or redrawn, separated colour by colour, output as film positives, then exposed onto coated mesh and washed out. One screen for every colour in the print.
03
Registration
Screens are set on the flatbed tables and registered against one another, so that six passes land as one image. Wooden frames here have been reused for over twenty-five years.
04
The pull
One screen. One colour. One pass. A printer walks the table, pulls the squeegee, lifts the screen and steps on. The rhythm is what holds a run of three hundred metres together.
05
Curing & finishing
Each print is cured through an energy-efficient tunnel dryer, then checked for registration, colour balance and finish before it is cut and dispatched.
06
A symphony of strokes
Where a print calls for something a screen cannot give, the brush takes over. Hand and silk painting — applied directly to the cloth, one length at a time, never twice the same.
✦
Nothing here is automated into anonymity.
The studio
Screen printed · Handprinted with sustainable waterbased inks
Made by hand in Nairobi.
Est. 2006 · Karen, Nairobi