Rugs stole the show in Milan. Yes, rugs. At a design event during which furniture normally reigns, carpets in convention-busting shapes and silhouettes abounded. At Gan, for instance, Patricia Urquiola’s Nuances pushed spatial boundaries: Fashioned from recycled felt, the collection’s Curve, Line and Round modules morphed from floor- to wallcovering and even into an upholstered pouffe. The lozenge shape that Urquiola favours was also repeated and refracted elsewhere, assuming art deco lines in Bohinc Studio’s West of the Sun rugs for Kasthall and doodle-like flourishes in Claire Vos’s motifs for Moooi.
Many of the debuts feel like bona fide art pieces. Joost van Bleiswijk’s Ripped and Teared and Colored for Nodus resembles a construction-paper collage. And then there’s Feathers by Maarten De Ceulaer for CC-Tapis. The Dutch designer digitally manipulates images of birds, combining their various features to create an abstraction that still feels recognizable. His artwork is then applied to wool and silk rugs with contrasting pile heights that emphasize its details. Clearly, De Ceulaer’s collection reflects how much designers are spreading their wings – plus a desire in the rest of us for surprising, irregular shapes that enliven our interior spaces.
Nuances by Gan
Using a variety of tones and different densities of recycled wool felt, Patricia Urquiola achieved a stone-like visual texture for Nuances. Along with three rug patterns – Curve, Line and Round – the collection features a pouffe.
West of the Sun by Lara Bohinc x Kasthall
“Capturing the contemplative aura of rocks, gravel and rippled sand of ancient Zen gardens,” this asymmetrical hand-tufted rug is pure wool and comes in two sizes, the larger one reaching two by three metres.
Feathers by CC- Tapis
Maarten De Ceulaer’s hand-knotted rugs for CC-Tapis are inspired by the avian illustrations of John Gould and John James Audubon. De Ceulaer combines bird images to form the abstract compositions that define these silk and Himalayan wool pieces.
Wunderkammer by Jaipur Rugs
Inspired by the architecture of Rajasthan in India, Matteo Cibic’s new rug collection includes this po-mo pattern. The handmade line promotes Jaipur’s socially sustainable model of employing over 40,000 artisans across 600 Indian villages.
Tangle Medan for MOOOI
Part of designer Claire Vos’s Yarn Box collection, the Tangle rugs for Moooi explore the whimsy of applying ribbon and weave motifs to carpets. They come in polyamide and wool versions, in dimensions of 194 by 280 or 296 by 392 centimetres
Ripped and Teared and Colored by Nodus
Featuring rough and torn edges, Joost van Bleiswijk’s hand-knotted wool–viscose rug measures two by three metres. Two other equally expressive patterns complete the collection.
Breaking free of circles and squares, expressive rugs in an array of unorthodox forms dominated Milan Design Week. Take a look at the latest by CC-Tapis, Gan, Kasthall and more.