Kusuma: A Floral Legacy and Tale of Three Crafts
We’re excited to launch Kusuma, Vaarsa London's first linen collection. Inspired by flowers and their timeless beauty, this collection brings nature’s elegance into your home, just in time for spring.
Why Florals?
Floral designs add warmth, freshness, and positivity to any home. They make spaces feel more inviting, cheerful, and alive. They are timeless and perfect for creating a calm and cozy environment.
A Legacy
This collection is special to the founder, Urvi Agrawal. She named it after her mom, Kusuma, which means "flowers" in Hindi. It’s a tribute to her mom’s love for flowers, the way she’s nurtured this love into so many beautiful gardens—both in her own home and her community—and how flowers bring so much calm, grace, and beauty to her mother's life.
Three Crafts
To bring florals into homewares while honoring Indian craftsmanship, Vaarsa London turned to three traditional crafts: Block Printing, Kantha Work, and Hand Embroidery. Each of these crafts carries centuries of history, a unique style, and are proudly Indian.
Block Printing: The Couture
Block printing is an age-old technique using hand-carved wooden blocks to create intricate patterns on fabric. Widely celebrated across the globe, this craft put South Asian craftsmanship on the world map, as early as the 17th century, when it influenced French fabric designs such as Toile de Juoy. These fabrics were long made using "Indian wooden blocks" before copperplate printing was adapted for mass production.
Vaarsa London calls block printing the "couture" of home decor. It requires skilled craftsmanship and precision, and when done right, it elevates a fabric into a work of art.
However, much like couture, it is often imitated. UK marketplaces is flooded with cheap knockoffs created using screen printing and chemical dyes. It is essential to buy pieces from credible sources, as only by doing so, you get an authentic piece as well as support the talented artisans who are keeping the craft alive.
We did our research and the math. An authentic 90 inch x108 inch block printed thick cotton quilt aka Jaipur Razai, cannot be sold for profit in the UK for less than £100 if artisanally made and ethically imported. If someone is selling you that, they are cutting corners somewhere.
Kantha Work: The Fast Fashion
The second craft, one which has pleasantly surprised us with its versatility, vibrance, and most importantly - ease of maintenance is Kantha work. It originated in West Bengal and Bangladesh and is now also popularly made in Jaipur, Rajasthan as well. The long-running design is a typical tell of this craft. Often layered over block prints, it adds texture and detail to an everyday item.
Traditionally, old fabrics were "patched" together to create new unique designs using this technique. Hence it was considered very on-trend and affordable (kind of like fast fashion but sustainable!). Even now, this craft is one of the most affordable as it is faster to produce compared to the other crafts in this collection. Florals are a common motif as a background for Kantha but At Vaarsa London, we also included geometric and animal motif pieces, to bring forth a variety for our customers.
Hand Embroidery: The Slow Fashion
Hand embroidery transforms fabric into art, quite literally. Much like hand painting, each piece carries a one-of-a-kind touch of the artist. It is the most time-intensive craft in the collection and also the most special.
It is also not protected from imitation as many big retailers have exploited the craft using machinery. It is not always straightforward but there are inherent tells such as stitch consistency (machine embroidery has very uniform and consistent stitches, while hand embroidery has variations in stitch length, style, and spacing) and back of the fabric (while not always visible, machine embroidery often has more visible thread ends and knots on the back, while hand embroidery tends to have a tidier reverse side).
As a child, it was this craft that made our founder, Urvi Agrawal, fall in love with home decor. Her mother fondly taught her how to do this on a kitchen apron that made her win the school's art competition - a find memory for Urvi, and a sweet full circle moment in the life of Vaarsa!
Final Thoughts
Kusuma is another one of Vaarsa's way to bring heritage into modern homes. Our collection is new, but our promise remains the same:
- Each piece is crafted by skilled artisans
- Every product is tested in our homes before we offer it to yours.
- Each item is handpicked for its quality, story, and value for money.
Vaarsa London is exploring a foot in the doors of linens with this collection. These products are highly selective and handpicked in small batch especially the block-printed quilts, bed sets, and table linens. So if you like a piece, shop before it's gone for good!
Shop now and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
