Change Is In The Air

For those of you who know Caversham and what we are all about you will know the incredible history and foundation that Caversham Textiles has been built on. Caversham Textiles was grown through a family’s love for art and the old school traditional way of doing things – my father’s unbelievable knowledge and influential experience in the Fine Art world, both in South Africa and abroad with The Caversham Press ; my fashion background and love of textiles that was all melded together with my one of a kind childhood of being surrounded by the art world – artists, the smell of the studio during the printing processes and the music that accompanied certain artists. Caversham Textiles was a culmination of all these things, trying to continue the ethos of what my parents had built over 30 years, a love of traditional printmaking techniques working hand in hand with the fine art influence by using small elements of prints that had been printed at The Press (as it is affectionately known) whilst still maintaining the integrity of the limited edition works. The result was seven collections of utterly unique designs with a modern South African feel. Whoever was lucky enough to step foot into our studio was always blown away by the beautiful light space and the vibrant fabrics, people were literally ‘Wowed’ by the space. Our hand printed fabrics have gone to all corners of the world, Australia to the United Kingdom to the tranquil Bahamas. Then 2020 rolled around and we jumped in with much excitement for all the things we had planned for what we felt was going to be a bumper year…. until we hit mid-March and Covid reared its nasty head. We cancelled our first two screen printing workshops for the year and held out hope that it would be over and done with quickly, which as we all know was not the case in the end. Like so many people we took the opportunity to withdraw into our quiet spaces and reassess who we are as a business and as a family, what our futures hold for us and what direction we are wanting to head in for the next of couple years. It was a blessing in so many ways to have no choice but to stop and take a step back and as result of this and other factors we have made the heart wrenching decision to stop our hand printing and move across to digital…. yes, like everyone else! As I said at the start of this post, anyone who knows us knows our history and will therefore also know just how hard this is for us, it is like losing a limb. However, despite the heartache of losing that wonderful process of hand printing, digital does afford us an amazing array of opportunities and we are chomping at the bit to get all our new ideas, designs and products out and available to the world. We still hope to keep our core ideal of working with the creatives and artworld and making art accessible in so many different ways to those that love and appreciate beauty in their homes and in their lives. So, stay tuned, we hope that you are going to be as excited about this new direction as we are!