INTERVIEWED BY Michaela Stehr IMAGE Brijesh Patel
Established international firm, The Rug Company has just opened a luxurious new store on Bree Street in Cape Town. We chatted to CEO and co-founder Christopher Sharp all about design.
What are the main design components you think about when planning a rug or design piece?
We are always looking for designers who can bring a new inspired direction to our collection. By working with brilliant and innovative designers we get a variety of different perspectives. We are always looking for designers who offer a point of view that our collections don’t currently express. We want to produce rugs that become iconic pieces; rugs that will be collected in the future.
The test of good design is how it looks on reflection after a number of years, so we’ll have to see! We’re not interested in collecting designers, but rather collecting great design. When we find designers that we think might create a great rug, we want to work with them. It’s that simple. We’ve been working with some of our designers for a while and they get better at understanding the medium, which makes the process both more enjoyable and more aesthetically successful.
Where did your passion for rugs and design develop?
It came out of a passion for collecting oriental rugs. My wife Suzanne and I had been living in the Middle East making films and had started collecting rugs, scouring markets and souks for interesting pieces. We became quiet obsessed! The more we learned, the more we enjoyed collecting, and the more sophisticated and, unfortunately, expensive our taste became. The price of knowledge…
When we came back to London in 1997 with a stack of wonderful rugs, we thought we could use our knowledge and start an interesting business. It was a hobby that became a consuming occupation. We wanted to offer an alternative type of rug buying experience with a more interesting narrative. We thought we could use traditional rug making techniques with contemporary design. This had always been the story of rug weaving – it was about innovation and great craft and it seemed that this history of innovation had become stagnant. I think we understood that we could carry on the tradition in a contemporary way. It is amazing that it’s still possible to weave rugs by hand and I think people underestimate how special well made, handmade rugs actually are.
Do you have any more exciting projects coming up?
We always have exciting projects coming up! There are some fantastic new collections in the pipeline, including cushions and wallhangings, as well as rugs, plus our new catalogue and other store openings.
For more information, visit therugcompany.com.
