100% handmade and natural: natural dyes give colour to our cushions

Sustainability, natural and handmade are the core pillars of Tupu Home. These values guide our fabrication process from the very beginning and the dyeing stage is no exception.

Our partner artisans use the natural resources that they find in their environments to dye their textiles. Dyes can be obtained from plants and flowers all the way to woods and insects. 

How does the process work? The plants or flowers are ground in order to obtain a powder. Water is boiled on a pot and the power is then added. Then come the wool threads, which are left for about an hour in the boiling water to make sure that they soak up the colour. Sal from the mines of Maras (that go back to the Inca times) is also added to fixate the colour in the wool. The wool threads are then taken out and sundried, after a couple of days they're ready to become part of a beautiful Andean textile. 

The purple tones found in our Koya cushion were obtqined from the Peruvian purple corn (also used to prepare the traditional soft drink chicha). 

Our Pink and Red cushion gets its colours from the woodlose, insect found in the tuna fruit. In Spanish we call it "cochinilla". 

The wood from the walnut tree (or nogal in Spanish) is used to obtain the brown and earthy colours of our Boho Beige cushion.