Instant Classics: Jayson Home x Tensira
Written by Sarah Storms Greenwald
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Just in time for summer, Chicago-based design stalwart Jayson Home has introduced a 24 piece home collection in collaboration with Tensira, the West African textile house helmed by Guinean and Finnish husband-and-wife team Hamidou Diallo and Tuulia Maakinen-Diallo. Offering everything from upholstered midcentury chairs to table linens, totes, and Tensira’s signature Kapok bedrolls, each exclusive textile in the collection is crafted by female artisans in the Republic of Guinea using hand-spun and handwoven cotton.
Rendered in crisp blue and white, the collection’s bold (if tightly-edited) palette draws on Tensira’s generations-old indigo dyeing technique while introducing an altogether original color. “We loved the idea of offering an evolution on everyday indigo by combining rich blue and black threads to create a new hue with even more depth,” says Chief Creative Officer Devin Kirk. “Blue and white stripes and black and white stripes are each so iconic in their own right. We wanted a color that kind of walked the line between the two to create something fresh that still felt familiar.”
The result is applied to four distinct geometric patterns that look as appealing on their own as they do layered together—or upholstered on, say, an antique French banquette as a striking display of the collection’s genre-bending versatility. “Mix the placemats with your grandparents' china; try a plaid bedcover at the end of a lacquered bed,”suggests Kirk of ways to meld the pieces into your existing decor style. “The pillows work literally anywhere: they somehow feel modern when you need them to be modern and trad when you need them to be trad.” For the many of us who refuse to be tied down to a single decorating personality, is there any better prescription for the perfect home accessory?
“Inspired by the awning stripes found at our favorite coastal getaways, we supersized that classic pattern to create dramatic scale and went with a not-quite-black-not-quite-blue hue for a fresh, updated take on everyday indigo.”
“A play on French parquet flooring, this deceptively simple design features stripes in shades of indigo, black and black-and-white, which together create a dimensional, blocky feel.”
“Drawing our inspiration from traditional dhurrie rugs, we went with varied band sizes when creating this worldly stripe, resulting in unexpected dimension and a surprising take on classic ticking.”
“The perfect marriage of Scandinavian simplicity and African indigo, we went for a classic, familiar design that would really sing on larger pillows and bedspreads when creating this oversized plaid.”