At Five | Six Textiles, we greatly value the making processes and the stories that lie behind the weaving culture of Côte d’Ivoire. 

Five | Six Textiles is a design collaboration with master weavers from Côte d’Ivoire. Using traditional patterns to create modern home goods, Five | Six celebrates the knowledge, skills, and specialized techniques that contribute to the realities of contemporary handwoven textile production in Côte d’Ivoire. We believe that traditional cloth innovation informs the present and the future of West African textiles.

Textiles are the threads that connect the past to the future. This realization, of both the visual and tactile beauty of handwoven fabrics, is best experienced through the use of color, texture, and pattern. These textiles are handwoven by master weavers at Waraniéné, in northern Côte d’Ivoire. Each piece marrying skilled craftsmanship with modern design aesthetics, invaluable aspects of the weaving creative process. Handwoven cloth exemplifies the evolution of a permeable craft, each design created from the exchange with the one that came before. 

Handwoven fabrics tell a story. A story of, tradition interwoven with nature, a present tactile experience, and a glimpse of future innovations.

Maintaining the specialized skills of local textile production, each Five | Six textile is handwoven in one long strip on a double-heddle upright-frame loom with 100% raw cotton. The same way handwoven fabrics have been produced for centuries. This process produces quality cloth that is durable, reminiscent of raw silk, and softens with use. Prioritizing slow production processes and the use of the human hand, each piece is a unique work of art.

Each textile is woven with locally grown Ivorian cotton. Once harvested, raw cotton is either hand or machine spun into large spools. The thread is left un-dyed or batch-dyed in a dark indigo color called blue marine. Some un-dyed cotton is hand-dyed if a different color is desired. The cotton is hand-spun onto hand-carved spools and threaded onto the looms.

Once on the loom, the raw cotton is woven into one long narrow strip of cloth using a complex system of peddles, wood slats, and dowels. Operated by foot and by hand, the motifs are loaded by warp and/or weft patterns (from which Five | Six gets its name). The weaver carefully plots out the design on a single strip, the motif built using a measuring system held in their mind. Manually threaded reeds are attached to small beams and cranked into position as a hand-shuttle darts between the layers. These looms are built by the weavers upon the completion of their initial training. This training can take up to 10 years and is passed down from father to son.

As the cloth is woven, it’s rolled onto a thick dowel. Once completed, the dowel is removed and individual strips are carefully cut and zig-zagged stitched together, completing the final pattern. Finally, the selvedges are finished with a single stitch, allowing the natural cut edge to remain visible.