Textiles guru and Marigold Living Founder Shreya Shah was raised in Mumbai. You might say she has a colorful past.
“My mother,” she says, “had beautiful taste. She was a homemaker raising four kids, but she did all kinds of embroidery, including on our bedsheets.”
As a girl, Shah accompanied her mother to a little print shop, a trip that turned out to be a magical memory. “I saw the blocks,” she says, referring to the heavy artisanal wood printers used to make patterns. The cherished Indian tradition dates to the 12th century.
The palette is drenched. The Roza tablecloth in coral pink? “I’m very much Indian in my love for pink,” notes Shah. “It is considered a welcoming color. But there are pinks and pinks. Saturated colors are our forte.”
Marigold Living, a collaboration with artisans in different regions of India, takes its cues from the environment, fruits, and the spice trade, Shah says. That means marigold and poppy flowers (see the Poppy-Gina design below); peacock blue, in honor of the birds; juicy mango; and golden saffron.
“Textiles are so easy. You put them down and you take them away. It’s so easy to change the mood in a room,” says the woman who has silk pillows, blues and whites, and “a drop of indigo” in the white paint on her walls.
“When I arrived in New York, I saw pizza on every other corner,” Shah adds. But handcrafted prints, those were an art form from her home country—and she made it her mission to bring them here.
(Care note: Use a mild detergent—Shah likes Woolite or Seventh Generation—and avoid heat and sunlight, which can cause fading. “You may get away without ironing the table linens, but it’s much nicer if you do. Just run the iron over them. It’s cotton.”)
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