Narrative Threads Blog
Scroll through our Narrative Threads blog to enjoy behind-the-scenes insight on special projects for leading interior designers and architects.
Scroll through our Narrative Threads blog to enjoy behind-the-scenes insight on special projects for leading interior designers and architects.
Rug designer may not sound like a career path that involves a wide variety of international travel but at Creative Matters it surely does. As in many jobs there are trade shows to attend, but what really racks up the passport stamps are the trips we make to supervise production of our rugs.
In 2018 we were delighted to participate in a project that required 97 handknotted rugs. Until this year, we have assigned handknotted rugs to our trusted fair trade suppliers in Nepal and India. In 2018 however, we had the good fortune to work with a slightly different style of handknotting and create an incredible opportunity for Afghan women.
Fair trade is a critical issue for our floorcoverings that are woven by hand. This includes our collection rugs, as well as custom projects that may be handwoven in Nepal, India or Afghanistan.
While most of our studio work consists of handknotted, handtufted or machine made floorcoverings, Senior Designer Sandra Ciganic-McKinney has been heading up a project developing a new type of area rug that is essentially a handtufted, zero pile rug with a screen printed field.
Clients who order handknotted rugs from us will notice the word STEP incorporated into our label on the back of the rug. This is our promise to you and your promise to your client that the rug was produced with the highest possible standards of fair trade.
In recent years, technology has opened up new opportunities, so producing machine-made carpet without a repeat has become a liberating design choice - it changes what used to be a very rigid way of producing carpet into a format with endless possibilities.
Take a look through our portfolio and collections and you will quickly notice that the vast majority of our floorcoverings - from boardrooms to bedrooms - are made of wool. As visual people, our love affair with wool begins with its aesthetic properties, but for interiors professionals there are a host of practical reasons why wool is the ultimate fibre.
Last month, 28 interior design staff from Yabu Pushelberg visited the Creative Matters studio for an interactive day to share each company's parameters for floorcovering projects. Here are the six most asked questions about rug creation.