44 The Melbourne Review November 2013
FORM
Designer Rugs
Colour Design & Textiles
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stablished in 1986 by the Tal family, Australia’s Designer Rugs has built for itself a reputation for successfully marrying the very best of rug production techniques with the might of some global, creative heavyweights.
Showcasing the latest colour trends in design and textiles/furnishings.
It’s a an enviable roll call; a burgeoning list of style-makers, artists, fashion industry icons and a two-time Academy Award Winner thrown in for good measure. Catherine Martin, Alex Perry, Akira Isogawa, Easton Pearson, Dinosaur Designs, Camilla … and many more have risen to the challenge of putting their creativity on the floor.
by Claire Beale & Kim Chadwick
With her first collection for Designer Rugs launched in 2008, Catherine Martin drew some of her inspiration from Australia, the feature film she was designing at the time with husband Baz Luhrmann.
Byzantine Princess (c. Colourways 2013)
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extiles can seduce, excite, comfort and inspire. They respond to our most basic needs, providing tactile solutions to increasingly complex material problems. In times of uncertainty, we look inward to enrich our own private spaces, creating places to hide away and dream, to find fleeting moments of rest, and to indulge in the luxury of collected treasures grown precious with age. Through a considered approach to colour and texture, deeply personal spaces are brought to life. These trends in textiles chart the emotional, intellectual, and even spiritual shifts in direction that impact upon our culture, and thus our lifestyles. Colourways’ recent Trend Forecast launched four key trends for the 2013 – 2015 season connecting nostalgia with pioneering spirit, industrial evolution with precious moments of wonder. No journey is conducted alone and every traveller carries something to treasure and remember.
Pioneering Spirit reflects the landscape in every surface. Like the land, the objects we touch and tend to are true, raw and unembellished. Rough and textured, a path is carved and our roots sink deep into the earth. We frame what we love and value. This is a story of bare truth. The simple honesty of hewn wood. The strength and endurance of homespun wool. The lip coating kiss of buttermilk. The twisting marl of a ghost gum, blue grey lichens vying for a place on the weathered cream surface of a fallen stone wall. The dusty breathy blue of a duck egg is treasured, copied, woven by hand into a moment. Everything is used – recreated and loved again as something new. Emerging textile designer Camilla Stirling’s 2013 graduate project ‘Beneath The Folds’ connects with this textured history, referencing the fragments of a pioneering past as they emerge from beneath the surfaces of the earth. ‘Through the eyes and the hands of the historic naturalist
– the preserver and observer – wearable textile artefacts are manifested as living memories, conveying a sense of place within the folds of cloth’. (Camilla Stirling 2013). Byzantine Princess brings elegantly poised moments of richness and earthly wonder. Like a cat, our senses stretch and flex, luxuriating in our surroundings. Iridescent jewels cascade through a lapis lazuli swirl and puddle at your feet. From an indigo dream, spin in a cocoon of royal intensity and sup on golden stars drenched in burgundy.
“I wanted to invoke the transforming power of pattern, which can change the mundane into the extraordinary merely by its application,” says Martin. “I aimed to design patterns with an inherent integrity that don’t take themselves too seriously – patterns that have a sense of sophistication, fun, luxury and also a sense of history – a vintage sensibility without losing its modern edge.”
»»Claire Beale is Vice-President, Vic/Tas, DIA; Kim Chadwick is Managing Consultant, Colourways.
A wonderful success, this range in time lead to a second release – a limited edition range of rugs emblazoned with a regal cockatoo motif and more recently, in parallel with the release of Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby motion picture, Martin designed a series of art deco inspired rugs, some custom-sized for use throughout the film.
design.org.au/vic colourways.com.au
Designed with the in-house Designer Rugs team in Australia, the process of
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Artists impression