Rugs,” says Rita Konig, “pull a room together.” It’s a usefulness we can enlarge on: rugs can also be used to demarcate different areas of a larger room, they provide insulation, and their colours and texture brings another layer of interest to an interior. For the great Robert Kime, every room began with a rug – “you have to start with something,” he said. The New York-based designer Miles Redd follows suit, using the tones within them to inform his choice of other textiles – an approach not dissimilar to Sophie Ashby of Studio Ashby’s maxim, “start with the art.” But it’s possible to do both – for the under the expertise of certain rug companies and designers, rugs are art. Tanya Ling – artist, former fashion illustrator and contemporary of the YBAs – has recently collaborated with Christopher Farr, the latest in a line-up that includes Howard Hodgkin, Louise Bourgeois, Gavin Turk, Terry Frost, Peter Doig and a host of others who are more usually associated with paint on canvas, or large-scale sculpture.
It’s worth paying attention, explains Hector Coombs, who worked for Christopher Farr before co-founding rug company Shame Studios, for we’re currently – thanks to Christopher Farr, which was founded in 1988 – observing a wave of creativity that “is moving a medium forward”, shaking up the (hand-knotted) ground beneath our feet, and giving us something that’s both new, and important. What’s more, despite the calibre of names mentioned, Christopher Farr Editions start from a comparatively reasonable £635 (others of their rugs are made to order, can be created bespoke to a space, and are more expensive.)
The lead up to this moment is intriguing. Many will know the history of artists’ interests in the applied arts (traditionally how rug design would have been described) which dates to the mid-19th-century birth of the Arts & Crafts movement in Britain and its drive for good, affordable, hand-made design. William Morris turned his attention to rugs and carpets in 1875; it was a market that was almost entirely dominated by original or imitation oriental carpets, and he was determined to change that. He studied the process, set up looms in his former stables, and developed a range – some based on his fabric designs, some specific to rugs – which did not die with him, but are still available now, via Jane Clayton. The Arts & Crafts ideals survived too, and spread throughout Europe and the world, inspiring, for instance, the German Bauhaus, where Anni Albers’ textile designs combined the ancient craft of hand-weaving with graphic prints and modern art with her interest in Pre-Columbian textiles. They also inspired Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Style of architecture, and his comprehensive vision that saw him also turn his hand to rug design; some have become iconic, others didn’t come to fruition.
“What’s important to understand,” explains Ptolemy Mann, an artist and weaver who has also collaborated with Christopher Farr (Karl Lagerfeld bought two of those rugs) and has her own collection too, is that “designing a good rug is a difficult thing. It’s not just about doing nice painting and thinking oh that will make a nice rug.” Perfecting the combination has been key for Christopher Farr since the company was set up by the eponymous founder, fresh from the Slade School of Art – and, having journeyed to Peru, enraptured with pre-Columbian textiles – and his business partner Matthew Bourne, who had been working in rug restoration; they met whilst both “working with the legendary rug dealer David Black,” recounts Matthew. Despite Morris’s efforts of a century before, the market in the early 1990s was dominated by “numerous traditional dealers in old carpets,” Matthew continues. “Yet we were young and surrounded by artists. We dedicated ourselves to making contemporary rugs” – though, it should be noted, using traditional techniques. “Christopher and Matthew invented the colourfield-type rug,” says Hector. Christopher was an abstract artist, “but the abstraction of the rug came from the quality of colour achievable within rug-making,” he explains. (“When it comes to colour, there’s a lot of skill in getting the colour movement right,” says Matthew. “The first sample of the Hodgkin CF Edition rug looked like a piece of streaky bacon – not the desired effect!”)
As well as collaborating with living artists, Christopher Farr has worked with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, bringing Anni’s textile designs to life as well as Josef’s famous Homage to the Square paintings, with the Omega Workshop archive – the design enterprise set up by members of the Bloomsbury Group, later of Charleston Farmhouse – and they’ve created a rug inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture. It’s indicative of the breadth of ability when it comes to working with art and artists, the talent of the in-house designers who know exactly how to combine numerous close colours to achieve the precise effect desired by the artist, and the various possible methods, which is “what drew me to the collaboration,” explains Tanya. There are two new rugs that bear her name. ‘Away Away’ is developed from one of her paintings, and is made in Afghanistan in partnership with Turquoise Mountain from Herat silk of the highest quality, a material that has been used for the finest rugs through the centuries – it dates to the Safavid Dynasty, the golden period in Persian rug making. The second falls under the heading of Christopher Farr Editions (there are 250 in the run) and is entitled ‘Aoueillès’, the name coming from Tanya’s studio in rural France where she completed the design, specifically intended for this rug; it is made from hand-tufted millspun wool in India.
Hers is not the only new launch to know about; Shame Studios recently revealed their collaboration with the interior designer and artist Cindy Leveson, a suite of hand-woven carpets entitled ‘Watercolours’. It’s their fourth collection since they set up in 2019, and within their back catalogue is a rug that features motifs taken from Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, including a rather exquisite Gauguin interior, and a series inspired by Memphis design. Notable is that their designs can also be made entirely bespoke, in terms of size and colours – “we’re currently turning one of the ‘Watercolours’ designs into a stair runner,” says Hector. Another name worth remembering is Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, established in 1912, who also collaborate with artists – Elizabeth Blackadder, William Scott, Kurt Jackson – though setting them apart is their method, which is tapestry weaving, and gun-tufting, and “all the works from our studios are intended to be displayed as pieces of art,” explains Euan Foley, their Commercial Officer. You could, of course, hang rugs by Christopher Farr on the wall too – but that is not why they were conceived. Rather, they really are functional rugs – and art, too.
