Terra Rossa

The Story

Terra Rossa is the first work in KURU's Abstract collection, and it takes the studio's entire embroidery vocabulary and releases it from the job of describing anything. What remains is a deep red linen field broken into irregular landmasses, drifting across a panoramic format the way terrain drifts under a plane. Each region is given over to a single technique and left to hold its own ground: clusters of gold bead ovals, open white honeycomb netting worked in the air above the cloth, dense fields of olive and blue cross-stitch, drifts of white French knots thinning toward an edge, panels of cream linen appliquéd in and outlined with couched red cord. There is no centre and no narrative. The eye is meant to wander, and the pleasure is in the crossings, the seam where one hand stops and another begins.

The restraint of the palette is what holds it together. Almost everything is madder red, brick and oxblood, with cream and gold carrying the light and a few passages of purple, blue, olive and lilac interrupting just enough to keep the surface awake. At close range the piece becomes a working record of technique: knot beside stitch beside bead beside void, each worked at a different height so the surface has genuine relief. It belongs to the sampler tradition, the cloth on which a maker sets down everything she knows, scaled up and composed as a landscape.

Terra Rossa is created under the artistic direction of Shantnu Sihag, trained at Istituto Marangoni and Rubelli Venice. Each artwork is entirely hand-embroidered, and the intricacy of materials and technique means no two pieces can ever be truly identical. Every artwork carries its own character, impossible to replicate exactly by hand, and is accompanied by a signed Certificate of Authenticity.