Between the Design and the Making

October 20, 2026

The conversations, adjustments and people who help turn a design on a screen into something you can hold.

There is a moment in developing every collection when the design leaves our screens and begins to meet the realities of making.

Until then, we have spent weeks looking at patterns, adjusting proportions, comparing colors and imagining how everything will come together. We know what we want the finished piece to look like. What we don't always know is exactly how the fabric, dyes and hand-carved wooden blocks will respond to those decisions.

That is where another kind of expertise becomes essential.

For The Peacock Palette, one of the people helping us navigate that transition is Vishal Mehta, our production coordinator in Jaipur.

Vishal grew up in Aasawala, a small village near Jaipur, and has spent the past decade working in textiles. His role goes well beyond coordinating orders. He helps us understand what is possible, what needs adjusting and what might behave differently once a design moves into production.

And there is quite a lot that can behave differently.

When a Design Meets the Fabric

A pattern that looks perfectly balanced on a computer screen doesn't necessarily translate the same way onto linen.

We experienced this while developing Bhor, one of the designs in our Baithak collection. Vishal helped us understand how the pattern might behave differently during hand block printing and what we needed to consider before moving ahead.

Working with the artisans, we paid particular attention to how the different layers of color would come together on the fabric. The printing process required careful consideration and adjustments to ensure the finished pattern remained as close as possible to what we had envisioned.

It was a reminder that designing a pattern and printing it by hand require two different kinds of expertise. Both are essential, and the conversations between them can make all the difference.

Color brings its own challenges. What appears on a screen is not always what appears on linen. During printing, we paid close attention to how the colors translated onto the fabric, working to keep them as close as possible to the palette we had developed.

These decisions might seem small when looking at a finished cushion, but they are precisely the details that determine whether a design feels the way we intended.

Working Across the Distance

We design in the United States, while much of the making happens in India. That distance is part of how our business works, but it also means that communication cannot be an afterthought.

There are decisions about sizing, color development, samples, production schedules, finishing and dispatch. Some are straightforward. Others require a closer look, another conversation or a different approach.

Vishal is involved throughout that journey, connecting our design intentions with the people and processes on the ground.

One of the things we value in working with him is his emphasis on transparency. In his own account of ten years in the textile industry, he speaks about the importance of telling clients not only what can be achieved, but also what challenges might arise.

We appreciate that distinction.

When something needs to change, we would rather understand why than receive a reassuring answer that doesn't reflect what is happening in the workshop.

A clear explanation allows us to make a better decision. Sometimes that means adjusting a detail. Sometimes it means allowing more time. And sometimes it means returning to the original idea and finding another way to achieve it.

These are ordinary parts of developing a collection, even if they are rarely visible in the finished photographs.

The Work Between the Milestones

When we share a new collection, the story often begins with inspiration and ends with the finished pieces. Between those two moments is a great deal of work that doesn't lend itself to a beautiful photograph.

There are measurements to confirm, colors to revisit, production details to coordinate and countless small questions that need answers before anything can move forward.

No single person makes a collection happen. The block carvers, printers, color specialists, workshop team and people coordinating the work each bring a different kind of knowledge to it.

Vishal's role sits at the intersection of those efforts. He helps keep the conversations moving and the details connected, from our initial brief through to the finished pieces being dispatched.

And perhaps that is what we have come to appreciate most about building The Peacock Palette.

Design is not simply an idea we hand over to someone else to execute. It is a process that continues through the making, shaped by the knowledge of people who understand materials and techniques in ways we are still learning.

When you see one of our hand block printed linen cushions, you see the pattern, the color and the finished form. What you don't see are the discussions that helped those elements come together.