Handmade Hemp Backpack - Hemp Leaf

A handloom hemp daypack banded in warm red, rust and orange, with a cream herringbone front pocket carrying a single green hemp leaf worked in thread. Padded webbing straps, a top grab handle, a zipped front pocket and an open pocket on each side. The leaf on the front is the plant the bag is made of. Hemp has been a hill crop in Nepal for centuries, grown for fibre rather than anything else, and spun into the rope, sacking, fishing net and cloth that a farming household needed before any of it could be bought. The maker’s own label says it plainly: hemp, THC free, made in Nepal. Wearing the leaf on a hemp bag is the same gesture as a wool label on a wool coat. Hemp has grown in the Nepali hills for centuries without irrigation or pesticide. The stalk is retted, hand spun and woven on a handloom, which gives a cloth that starts out rough, softens every time you use it, and gets stronger rather than weaker when it is wet. The pale ground is the fibre in its own colour, not a bleach. Because the cloth is woven and the bag cut and sewn by hand, the stripe placement, the depth of the natural colour and the exact set of the pockets come out a little different every time. Yours will not be identical to the photograph, and that is the point. Ships worldwide from our Vancouver store with live carrier rates at checkout.

Every piece is worked individually, so colour, thickness and finish vary a little from one to the next. That variation is a feature of the craft, not a flaw.