Cream
The inside of a shell, and the colour most of the house is written on.
The Colour Room
The palette was never designed.
It was collected.
Every colour the house works in is somewhere outside the door of the teak house, at some hour of the tide. This room keeps them all: what each cord is named for, and which pieces carry it. When you design your own, these are the colours in your hands.
The quiet ground
What the house is written on.
Ecru
Unbleached cotton exactly as it reaches the island, before anyone has an opinion about it.
Dove
The morning sky that cannot decide whether to rain, most mornings from May to October.
Khaki
Dry sand above the tide line, where the boats are pulled up past the reach of the water.
Sand
The wet sandbar at the river mouth an hour after the tide turns.
Charcoal
The teak wall of the house at night, a black that was brown a hundred years ago.
The island
Colours collected outside the door, at some hour of the tide.
Monsoon
The sea below the deck an hour before the rain arrives. The most argued-over dye lot in the history of the house.
Navy
The horizon ten minutes after the sun has gone, before the fishing lights come on.
Olive
The palms after the first monsoon rain washes the dust of the dry season off them.
Palm
Young fronds, first week, before the sun has had time to tire them.
Caramel
Teak oiled by a hundred years of hands, the exact colour of the stair rail worn smooth.
Espresso
Coffee at the Old Town pier, drunk slowly while the tide does the working.
The statements
Allowed in, one at a time.
Raspberry
The dragonfruit crates stacked on the Saladan pier when the boats come in.
Watermelon
Cut fruit in the shade of the pier at noon, the one colour we allow to be loud.
Marigold
Temple garlands, and the heart of every daisy the house has ever stitched.
The daisy, in the Stitch Library · The Frangipani, its heart
The drop of heat
Rust
The one drop of heat. It is the dot in the seal, the thread in the monogram, the accent under the links you press. It appears everywhere and it is never allowed to be more than a drop; that restraint is the whole brand.
The stitches these colours are worked in live in the Stitch Library. To hold one of them in your own hands, design your own piece or begin a private commission.