Toronto studio fights to preserve the dying craft of bespoke curtain making

TORONTO — In a Toronto workshop filled with fabric and hand-made rosettes, a small team of artisans is fighting to preserve the dying craft of bespoke curtain making.

Studio La Beauté owner Camal Pirbhai says the knowledge required to make such beautiful things is disappearing, overtaken by machine-made mass production and a culture used to getting things quickly and cheaply.

"What disappears when a craft dies is not simply a way of making an object, but the knowledge accumulated and passed from one pair of hands to another," Pirbhai said.

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The studio creates curtains, cushions, blankets, bespoke chandeliers, headboards and wall coverings using techniques like hand-stitched linings, padded trapunto quilting and beadwork.

Pirbhai, a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, trained in bespoke curtain making in Europe more than three decades ago.

He built his business through word of mouth, and his soft furnishings can now be found in homes in Toronto's most affluent neighbourhoods, as well as in New York, London and Europe.

Interior designers also bear some responsibility for the craft's decline, Pirbhai said, as they may spend hours selecting an expensive fabric but give little thought to how it is cut, stitched, pleated and hung.

"The last decade I’ve been pounding the table, saying to designers, ‘Please don’t just mail it in. Let’s have a little discussion,’" he said.

Toronto interior designer Colette van den Thillart, who holds a master's degree in decorative arts, has been bringing her custom drapery work to Studio La Beauté for the past six years.

"There really aren’t a lot of people who do what he does in North America," van den Thillart said. "There also just isn’t the demand for this any more, except from a few of us."

She believes a culture focused on convenience and resale has contributed to the lack of interest, with realtors advising homeowners not to personalize too much.

"Everywhere people are living their lives in these boxes, painted white with furniture from Restoration Hardware, designed for resale," she said. "I find it utterly depressing."

Van den Thillart compares curtain making to dressmaking, noting the importance of cut, hem and edge details.

For a client's country house in Ireland, she and Pirbhai are creating a hand-stitched café curtain for a bathroom, embellished with wildflowers that reflect the garden outside.

"When she sits in her tub, I want her to have a Proustian moment," van den Thillart said. "The café curtain is going to look like a specimen vase of what she loves most growing on her property."

The survival of such work depends on finding new artisans to carry it forward, she said.

Memengwaans Isaac-Sands, 31, has worked at Studio La Beauté for a decade, applying beadwork skills passed down through generations of her Ojibwa family.

"It was just something I knew how to do," Isaac-Sands said. "It wasn’t until I started studying and working in the city that I realized how rare it is. It means so much that the work I do here is valued."

Pirbhai said he is not asking for a return to a world where every curtain is sewn by hand, but for an appreciation of what is lost when speed, price and convenience become the primary measures of value.

He said a machine can reproduce a pattern faster and more precisely, but cannot possess the accumulated knowledge and judgment of a craftsperson.

"That knowledge survives only when it is used," Pirbhai said. "Someone has to teach it. Someone has to learn it. And someone has to believe the difference is worth paying for."

With files from The Globe and Mail