Tufted & Buttoned Sofas made in Nepal

There are two things sold as tufting in Nepal and they cost the same to photograph, which is why the difference is worth understanding before you spend.

Real tufting is a series of buttons pulled through the foam and the cover and tied off against the frame behind, each one by hand. The pull is what creates the diamond folds — the fabric is drawn into the button and gathered into the pleat by a person who has decided where that pleat should fall. On a three-seater back that is around forty-two buttons and the better part of two days of one karigar's time. It is why the price band starts where it does.

Machine dimpling is a surface effect: the cover is pressed or stitched to imitate the pattern, with nothing pulling through to the frame. It looks close in a photograph. It behaves nothing alike, because the foam underneath is not being compressed and held, so the pattern loses definition as the foam relaxes. Within two years it reads as a slightly wrinkled flat back.

How to tell them apart in ninety seconds. Put your finger into a button hollow and press. On real tufting you will feel the button anchored to something solid behind and the fabric will not move much. On a dimpled cover the whole area gives. Then look along the back at a low angle: hand-tied buttons vary very slightly in depth, because a hand made them, and the diamonds between them are crisp. Machine work is perfectly even and slightly soft. Perfectly even is the tell.

Which fabrics suit it. Tufting needs a cloth with enough body to hold a fold: polyester velvet, a good jacquard, or leather. It does not suit loose weaves, boucle, or thin cottons, which pucker around the button rather than pleating. We will decline to build a tufted piece in a fabric that will not hold, and we will show you why on a sample first.

Living with it. Buttons collect dust, so run a vacuum brush around them monthly — that is the entire maintenance. If a button ever pulls loose, it is a fifteen-minute repair and it is covered for the first year. Our RP Heritage Tuft starts at NPR 78,000 in velvet; the leather Chesterfield starts at 1,25,000. Both take four to six weeks, and any workshop promising a hand-tufted sofa in two weeks has not hand-tufted it.

Ask about tufted & buttoned sofas on WhatsApp Call 9849239091