Over the past year, I've worked with Tara Townsend, Creative Director and founder of Adara Rituals, to bring her vision for soulful, contemporary Judaica to life by creating illustrations for handmade home decor like Challah covers, placemats, and tealight holders. Tara, a San Francisco mom and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, draws inspiration from her Jewish heritage, nature-based spirituality, and inclusivity to craft these stunning collections featured in Rolling Stone, Good Housekeeping, Women’s Day, Glamour and the Jewish Museum Shop in New York.
My role at Adara has been a mix of illustration, design and production drawings for the embroiderers, beaders, and fabricators. For a peek into the Challah cover's creative process see below.
Sabbath Queen Challah Cover
A magickal, tarot-inspired design to pay homage to the Schechina. Referred to as the “Sabbath Bride” or the “Sabbath Queen” - she is the creative feminine essence that is both of the Earth and of the Cosmos. The vesica piscis symbol in her hair contains the original separation - the seed of all life and creation.
Mood Boards/Creative Brief
Tara envisioned a design inspired by goddesses, nature, and the cosmos, with a frame similar to that of a tarot card. She wanted two options for colors. The first would feature neutral gold and silver embroidery, while the second would be a striking black and lavender print embellished with gold and silver embroidery.
Sketches to Final Art
For the first draft- we tried two versions;
Cosmic & Elemental- symbols related to earth, air, water, fire and the cosmos.
Duality- the idea of opposing forces, sun/moon, night/day, “As above, so below.“
After settling on the Duality version, we added color and simplified the design as it was feeling a little cluttered.
Production Drawings & Samples
The last part of the process is creating documentation for the embroidery artists which involves selecting Pantone colors, fabrics, threads, and beads. This stage can often result in some design revisions. For example in this case we had originally planned for rose quartz beads to be added but after difficulty sourcing them we simplified and switched to embroidery accents instead.
Final Challah Covers
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