Toucan Krafte is a textile crafting enterprise based in New Delhi that dedicates itself to empowering women through the development of sustainable employment opportunities. Traditionally, women carry out small-scale textile crafting in small production clusters in their homes. Toucan Krafte has used this cluster model to create viable training and sustainable employment for hundreds of urban women – the model is an example of a self-sustaining society flourishing in a challenging urban environment.
The collaboration creates far-reaching social impact, commits to the use of up-cycled materials and is low in its carbon footprint. This wider context is the driver and the inspiration. Starting as an exploratory exchange, the collaboration has developed to be a long-term engagement to generate new audiences for hand crafted textile innovations, elevating experience and perception.
The textile innovations themselves, originate from traditional textile crafts. They can be understood as new crafts - creating their own aesthetic and visual identity, using heritage textiles as a foundation. Each technique innovated by Toucan Krafte is a new craft, comprising of small elements that form complex compositions.
Small-scale elements, lightweight materials and local working are all factors that help work fit in with women’s parenting commitments. This traditional manner of working has brought communities together for many generations with positive effects passing from generation to generation.
Alongside the social impact of the product, the collaboration, nurtures concepts that are true to the ethical luxury movement and to the wider values of Loco Design. Innovating across a breadth of material disciplines with authenticity and commitment - the approach combines a traditional crafting expertise with continual evolution of technical processes.
PERLA
Perla is a handcrafted textile surface of intricate colour composition, comprising of beads that are fabric clad by hand and individually stitched to their backing. The technique can be likened to Pointillism, where small, distinct dots of colour are applied in patterns to form an image or composition. Expertise in colour transitioning, composition and application make Perla distinct, with each artwork unique to the commission and the space it is created for.
LINA
Lina uses interlaced braiding stitched flush to create expanses of textural colour. Often used with element detailing. Lina creates landscape like expanses, varying in colour, shape and braided scale.
FLORET
Floret is a handcrafted technique of layered colour composition, comprising of layers of fabrics stitched together and pinched to form a loose flower. The loose ruffling effect of the technique allows the layers to create visual intensity.
