Home Style Q&A interview... Emily Horton speaks to ethical rug designer Tania Johnson about her striking designs
- What do you do?
A) I design contemporary, hand-knotted rugs, each of which is fully bespoke.
- What inspires you?
A) The patterns created by light, shadows and reflections and the microscopic details found in nature.
- What is your style passion?
A) I love capturing fleeting moments in time through photography and then creating a rug design from them.
- How did you get into rugs?
A) I graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in woven textiles before designing for high-end companies in the US, including Calvin Klein Home. I designed Klein’s first rug collection in 2002 and thus discovered my passion. My debut collection of hand-knotted rugs came out in New York under my own label in 2010.
- Tell us about your current collection...
A) Our most recent collection, Journeys in Colour, involves the creation of bespoke colour palettes, experimenting with shading and inspiration from architecture, interiors and locations.
- Why did you choose Twickenham as your base?
A) Most of my clients are based in West London and I wanted to be close by, yet with quick and easy transport links into town. I also needed somewhere that offered good schools for my daughters. My sister Sally-Anne, who works with me, also lives locally and we strive for as good a work/home balance as possible.
- What is your key piece?
A) Waterlines. Based on light’s reflections dancing on water, it’s one of my signature designs. It is also one of our most difficult to weave, as it needs to be very detailed in order to achieve the subtle gradation of the water pattern.
- Where are your rugs produced?
A) They combine Himalayan wool and Chinese silk and are hand-woven in Kathmandu, Nepal by highly skilled artisans whose incredible talent has been passed down through the generations. Each year I visit them and learn something new. The wool is unique to the manufacturing process in Nepal, as it cannot be exported anywhere else. Owing to the harsh elements, it’s rich in lanolin, which helps create a beautiful lustre and gives durability to the rugs.
- What is GoodWeave?
A) GoodWeave works to end child labour in the carpet industry. It’s the only rug labelling scheme that carries out random inspections and guarantees a transparent supply chain. To a small business like mine, based thousands of miles away, it offers the best assurance of ethically produced rugs. In 2014, I visited its rehabilitation centre in Kathmandu. Seeing children who had endured forced labour and abuse being educated happily and in safety made me proud to be a member.
- What is your USP?
A) I design every rug in our collection myself and each one is based on a photo I’ve taken, so they have quite a specific and personal style. With my background in weaving, I am also very technical in my approach and create every weaving graph myself. Very few designers are able to do that – they generally send an image and the manufacturers create the graph for weaving.
Our rugs all tend to be different sizes, so with each new order I create a new graph. Every square represents a knot for the weavers to produce by hand – our most detailed designs contain about 200 knots per square inch. Working to this level of detail ensures the finished rug will be exactly as I have designed it.
- What do your customers love about what you do?
A) The subtlety of the designs, which have a strong connection with nature but remain very abstract. This can work well in many different interior settings.
One of the biggest compliments I have had from someone was that looking at my designs made them feel so serene. As I generally feel far from calm myself, I felt that was quite an achievement!
- What are your styling tips?
A) Our rugs work well in a number of settings due to their abstract nature. As everything is custom-made, we can create any design in any colour.
If the rug is to be a strong statement piece, we would select a design/colourway to reflect that. If, however, it needs to blend in with the room, we’d go for one of our subtler, more abstract designs in neutral shades or perhaps with just small accents of colour. I can also work purely from clients’ own photos or artwork.
You can find out more at taniajohnsondesign.com
For more great home style pieces click here, like our piece on how to recreate the glamour of the Savoy in your own home
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