Fishink from African Wax to Aduna Products

Creative people that I encounter and readers of my blog often ask me the question ” What did you do before Fishink ? ” so in a small attempt in answering this question, I’ve decided to share a little of the creative journey that has led me to where I am today.

Three years ago I was made redundant from a company who designed wax printed fabric for the African marketplace. I had been working there for about 12 years, and during that time, sadly the larger group who owned the company overseas had imploded, leaving behind, in the UK company a small studio of about 6 designers from a company who, in this country alone, had once employed about 500 workers.

Here’s an article from the Manchester Evening News from last year which explains a little more and here are some of my own designs that I created over the 12 years whilst working there.

The company created fabric which sold in London, USA, Holland, Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Benin, and Togo to name but a few places. It was an amazing process to watch a design be printed. Firstly the fabric would be printed with the wax, using engraved metal rollers (with the designs that I created) that scooped up hot molten wax from a trough and placed it onto the fabric in all the areas (on the designs below for example) where the dark linear artwork didn’t appear, i.e. where the coloured areas are. The fabric would then travel through a number of indigo dye baths until the correct depth of shade was reached. The wax was used as a resist, because it literally resisted the indigo dye from reaching the original white cloth surface.

The fabric would then travel through various machinery and get twisted and scrunched in all manner of ways in order to crack the wax and release areas of previously unexposed fabric. These areas would next be printed with the first and second colours. The remaining wax would then be washed off and the last plain colour could then be printed with no wax effects showing in these areas.  Walking around the factory when the machines were in full service was both exciting and deafening at the same time. The factory felt like a cross between Heath Robinson and Willy Wonka, with a myriad of pipes running all over the place and with fizzing steam, thick gloopy dye and hot dripping fabric sitting in huge plastic containers on wheels, momentarily paused on it’s way from one process machine to the next.

Some of the more expensive fabric collections would then have coloured foil design adhered to the cloth, by first printing glue and then using a heat process to fix the foil onto the glue and therefore onto the surface of the cloth. The excess foil would then be peeled off and the surface of the fabric had an amazing shimmer and would catch the light. I can see why the product worked so well under the hot African sunshine.

It was really sad to see the demise of an industry happening around us. We had spent time out in Ghana, Nigeria, and Benin working with the designers who were based there and we were part of a huge global company that had once been a king amongst it’s countrymen. A familiar story with so much of the textile industry today and although six designers still work there, the original site has now been cleared for a new industry to take it’s place.

A lot of the products I worked with were specifically for the Ghanian marketplace. They have a huge wealth of historical symbols and meanings that are part of their heritage and would appear in old and traditional designs that their grand parents might have worn. Familiarity and recognition of shapes, colours and symbols would sometimes determine how well a design might sell in the marketplace. My work was to create new designs that looked traditional, I hoped I managed it.

During my time with this company and since, the designer Yinka Shonibare, who has recently had a huge exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, used the fabrics we created to adorn his mannequins and one of my designs took flight on the sails of his Ship in a Bottle, now on one of the plinths in Trafalgar Square, London.

I was fortunate to be approached by a London based company Aduna who were in the process of creating a health and beauty brand using natural African products. They were looking to work with a designer who had had experience with the African textile market, we met, exchanged a few skype calls, emails and drawings and the eventually first of the designs for their Baobab range was born. That was 12 months ago and I’m now working on the next.

I was really happy with the end design and the company owners are selling it in the likes of Harrods and are in talks with other high end distributors.

Another customer wanted me to design a range of wax inspired cards, which sadly didn’t materialise, due to lack of funds. Perhaps I’ll create a range and sell them at some point in the future.

It’s nice to think that little areas of wax related products are still in demand and being seen in the UK and abroad. Next time you see some, think about where it may have originated.