The rug connection

Most people study industrial design, go on to become an industrial designer - creating lamps, furniture . . . all the hard stuff. But not Nani Marquina. The industrial design graduate from the Escuela Massana of Barcelona found her niche as a rug designer. "There was no demand for industrial designers in Spain when I had finished school in 1970," says Ms Marquina, who was in Singapore recently for the Maison&Objet Asia show.

"There were people who designed furniture, but no one was designing contemporary rugs," she goes on. Seeing a gap in the market, Ms Marquina says: "I knew that if I wanted to design new rugs, I had to start my own company." Back then, contemporary rugs were unheard of in Spain.

In 1987, she founded her eponymous company. In Singapore, her rugs are available at Space at Bencoolen Street. Asked to describe her rug-making style, the 62-year-old says: "My rugs try to connect with people through colours, sometimes texture, and volume. People connect with the rug the same way they do with a piece of art."

The nanimarquina mantra is "we like to make people fall in love with our rugs. When people say they want this rug in their home now, this is when we know that we have succeeded", says Ms Marquina.

But while a well-designed furniture or product can be easily defined, a well-designed rug may seem harder to appreciate. But Ms Marquina says simply: "A rug that looks good, that looks like a piece of art, that is a well-designed piece".

Ms Marquina designs some of the rugs herself, but she also works with fellow designers. They include well-known names such as Tord Boontje, Ron Arad, Marti Guixe and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. "I work with designers that have similar thoughts as me - designers who respect craftsmanship and who are interested in transforming the world of rugs," says Ms Marquina. No brief is given to the designers, who instead come back to her with proposals.

One of the key pieces in the collection is Losanges by the French Bouroullec brothers. The technically complex piece is handmade using the ancient kilim technique and requires great skill as it involves combining 13 colours through the geometrical rhombus shape.

Another new piece in the collection is Ghost by Spanish designer Guixe. His black and white Ghost rug recreates the mythical pictorial motifs of birds, flowers, horses and deer that appear and disappear like ghosts. ninamarquina rugs are made from wool, jute, nettle, silk, recycled polyester and even recycled rubber from the inner tubes of bicycle tyres.

"I wanted to use a new material that wasn't used before, so I thought about latex," says Ms Marquina. The tubes are cut into strips and used like threads to form the Bicicleta rug.

From a factory in Spain, she decided to move her production to India, Pakistan and Morocco. "We could only produce machine-made rugs in Spain, which was rather limited," she explains.

At the new production locations, the rugs are all made using traditional methods, such as the hand tufted, hand knotted, hand loomed and kilim techniques, by local craftsmen. "As everything is handmade, there is no limitation to the thread thickness, shape, and colours when producing a rug," says Ms Marquina.

You would think that with a handmade product, each piece will be different, but Ms Marquina shakes her head. "No, no, all the pieces must look the same. And they must look exactly like they do in the catalogue. That is the real challenge for the craftsmen," she says. She adds that she has a small loom at home to make samples.

Moving her production out of Spain, she adds, fulfils her wish to boost local economies in these countries and offers new opportunities and improved living standards for local people.

Nanimarquina also works with Care&Fair, an organisation that combats child labour and works towards improving the living conditions of the people who work in rug manufacturing in India, Pakistan and Nepal.

Nanimarquina makes voluntary contributions to Care&Fair by earmarking a percentage of the value of the rugs they import, thus funding schools, training, hospitals and healthcare programmes developed by Care&Fair in the above mentioned countries.

While Ms Marquina heads the design team, her family is very much involved in the business. Her daughter, Maria Piera, is her right- hand woman in managing the business, son-in-law Pierre Armengaud deals with global sales, and her sister Carlota is the company's art director.

Ms Marquina says it is both "satisfying but difficult" to have family work with her. "My daughter studied economics, so making money matters to her," she says. "I, on the other hand, want to make good looking products. So we both have different visions, but we can still produce results."

She lets on that she has about seven rugs at home. "Rugs define a space," she says. "I like to think of them as a 'tray' under furniture, where they give more importance to it."

While she has found success by going into a niche market, Ms Marquina believes she could be just as successful had she become an industrial designer. "If I had chosen to design some other product, such as a sofa, or a light, I would still be successful as a rug designer, as I put in the same interest in all my projects."

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