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The Rug Company
DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT
Following the launch of The Designer Collection in the year 2000,
we have continued to collaborate with a wide-reaching roster
of the world’s most celebrated and talented creatives from the
realms of fashion, art, architecture and product design, all of
whom share our passion for quality and craft.
To celebrate the success of the past two and a half decades, we
asked the designers to recall their greatest highlight or fondest
memory of working with The Rug Company, and to imagine if
they were one of our rugs, which would that be?
SIR PAUL SMITH
My most enduring memory
of working with The Rug
Company is the first time I
played with the yarns in my
hands, put the colours together
and built up the pattern. It was
such a rewarding process, and I
will never tire of seeing the final
three-dimensional quality.
If I were to be a rug it would
be Carnival. Stripes are
synonymous with me, but this
design pushes colour and stripe
to a new way of working.
MARTIN BRUDNIZKI
My greatest highlight was
finding out about my
collaboration. Having been a
long-time admirer of The Rug
Company it felt like I had been
anointed by the rug gods.
If I were to be a rug it would
be my own rug, Folly, that
combines a touch of classical
balustrade mixed with leopard
– traditional but playful.
DAVID ROCKWELL
The Lola rug has one of my
favourite backstories. We
explored abstract patterns
based on the brushstrokes
that my daughter Lola and I
decorated on ceramic vessels
in the studio of ceramic
artist Pascale Girardin. The
pieces feature a single,
broad blue brushstroke.
Girardin used this approach
to create hand-thrown sake
bottles for Rockwell Group’s
Nobu restaurant. The rug
composition expresses the
same spontaneous movement
and flow of colour that appear
on the vessels.
If I were a rug, I’d have to say
one of Paul Smith’s designs - the
Swirl! He is undeniably one of
the greats, and I respond to
the range of colours, the fluid
lines and the joyful approach. It
reminds me of theatre.
