Paisley Tote Bag

Why one paisley the size of a dinner plate instead of forty little ones? Because at that size you can finally see what is inside it.

Inside the big one

The boteh curls across the wine ground under a double gold outline, with a rim of teal scallops running round the inner edge and a chain of fine gold beads tracking the curve out to the tip, where it turns in on itself as a spiral. At its heart is a flower mandala, worked outward: teal points, then rust-orange petals, then cream ones, then a small teal ring and a gold button dead centre. Three smaller paisleys sit around it in teal and rust, each drawn the same way at a fraction of the size.

The small things between them

Cream daisies, gold starbursts, a slim gold leaf sprig, and a couple of gold rings with a pale eye in the middle: the sort of small round charm you find printed along the border of a market scarf. It is what stops all that open wine from reading as empty.

Turn it round for the medallion

The second face drops the teardrop shape entirely and hands you a circle: a crown of gold scalloped petals on the outside, then a teal band carrying eight small cream four-petal flowers, then a rust disc with one long-petalled cream daisy opened across it and a gold button at the centre. A smaller version of the same medallion sits below it, the first one answering itself under its breath.

And the bag underneath all that

Wine, with paisley laid a shade under the ground colour itself (vines, teardrops, curling leaves, the whole panel of it), and it steps forward when the light comes in sideways. Two black webbing straps, woven flat. It is cut as an upright box with a flat panel underneath. A small tab sits tucked at one corner of the opening. Both sides are printed, and the two pictures do not match each other, so whichever way round you set it down you are showing somebody something.

Printed after you order it, not before, and five to ten working days in the making. That is the ordinary, unglamorous reason this design cannot go out of the shop while you are thinking about it, and the reason nobody else at the market has this one under her arm.