Handmade Hemp Backpack - Lord Shiva

A handloom hemp daypack banded in red, green and black on a cream ground, with a herringbone front pocket printed with Shiva in black line: the matted hair piled high with the crescent moon set into it and the Ganga running out, the third eye and the three ash lines on the brow, the trident at his shoulder and the snake coiled at his throat. Padded webbing straps, a top grab handle, a zipped front pocket and an open pocket on each side. Every detail in that drawing is a story. The river is in his hair because the Ganga fell from heaven with force enough to break the earth, and he caught it in his locks to let it down gently. The snake is Vasuki, worn as an ornament by the one god who has no fear of what the others avoid. In Nepal he is Pashupatinath, lord of the animals, and his temple on the Bagmati is the holiest ground in the country, drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims on the night of Mahashivaratri. 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. A note on the image: this is a devotional portrait, and many people prefer not to rest a bag carrying one directly on the floor. We mention it because it is the kind of thing worth knowing before you choose it, not to tell anyone how to carry their own bag. 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.