meet Amba
Amba was born in the high Himalayas, September 5th, 1926. She married in her teen years and gave birth to five children in her single-bedroom home in the small, mountain city of Dehradun. She became a mother to an additional thirteen children from her extended family, bringing them to her home in the city where they gained access to public education, a luxury that didn't exist in the hardscrabble mountain heights. Waking at 4 am, she meditated daily, and afterwards toiled in the ways of mothers, caretakers, cooks, cleaners, and those who are poor in such a way that every broken thing must be fixed. Every torn thing must be mended. Amba's hands were skilled, her heart was giving.
Amba means "mother" in her native language, Kumaoni.
And Ambaamba means the mother of mothers. Because when someone takes care of another woman's child, she is also taking care of that woman. We honor Amba.
our ethos...
Nothing is created and nothing destroyed. Everything transforms.
We consider the scale of transformations -
star into planet,
planet into tree,
tree into oxygen,
oxygen into water,
water into flesh and bone,
bone into rock,
rock into soil,
soil into tree,
tree into oxygen.
We catch awareness of connectedness, inspiring stillness and joy.
At AMBAAMBA, we play and create with discarded fabrics, instead of newly manufactured, to avoid adding burden and pollution to the environment. And with this, we acknowledge the lovely truth that nothing is new, but it can be different from what it was. Every artist builds their messages from those who came before them. We honor those who teach us, and we hope to build on their visions, as we hope future generations will take our works and ideas and do something unexpected with them.
how we got here...
Our founder, Sara, worked as a graphic designer focusing on type design, color, and illustration. As a parent to a toddler, Sara began redesigning and repurposing children's clothing that had been soiled or grown out of. Aiming to begin a company making children's clothing, Sara was diverted by the pandemic, and put the vision on a shelf.
Six years later, Sara moved to a new state, got divorced, and decided to warm up the old dream for a new day. Now, Sara is working from her small apartment, with a kitchen table that doubles as a cutting table, and book shelves repurposed to house fabrics.
In her quiet time, she walks the forest next to her apartment, coordinates monthly trash clean ups, teaches children how to track deer, makes sculptures from the thick vines, then spirits the sculptures back into the trees to gather spiderwebs and bird nests.