Nina Campbell | Valdivia

Valdivia lays broad bands of colour across a herringbone ground, the contrast between stripe and weave giving the cloth two rhythms at once, one bold, one quietly textural. It takes its name from the Valdivia people of Ecuador's southwest coast, the earliest known settlement in the Americas, and there is something of that age in its directness.

Woven in France from linen, viscose and cotton at 140 centimetres, it has the dry, natural handle the fibre mix suggests. With a rub test of 20,000 it is suited to curtains, blinds and lighter domestic upholstery, an occasional chair, a bench cushion, rather than the hardest-working seat in the house. Run vertically the bands stripe a curtain; turned sideways they band a headboard.