Sarabande Debuts ‘The Sarabande Collection’ With The Rug Company

 

Following Tuesday evening’s “Dream with Sarabande” fundraiser party in New York City, the Sarabande Foundation on Wednesday unveiled an artist-driven collaboration of rugs with The Rug Company. The launch also occurs during, and celebrates, The Rug Company’s 25th anniversary.

Titled “The Sarabande Collection,” the lineup features five artisanal rug designs from five independent creatives, whom the foundation — established by the late Lee Alexander McQueen in London to champion creativity and support the next generation of global designers and artists — has supported. The Rug Company partnered with each artist to represent the integrity and depth of each of their individual crafts and disciplines into five woven designs that are available worldwide.

 

“There’s a great community within the foundation of all the artists who have spaces,” Trino Verkade of the Sarabande Foundation told WWD during The Rug Company’s “Sarabande Collection” preview. “The whole point about the foundation is, it’s not just fashion, it’s not art — it’s all the creative disciplines. It’s important we’re surrounded by people that inspire you, that do something different to you — you can focus on your own works, but you love looking at what others do, and have a huge respect for their practice as well.”

Within “The Sarabande Collection” for The Rug Company, multiple disciplines were crafted into striking rug designs, created to celebrate each of the artists’ visions. For instance, multidisciplinary artist Stephen Doherty’s “Anemone” rug boasts large-scale ethereal watercolor florals, with silk threads woven to form the petals and hand-carved details; silversmith Shinta Nakajima’s soft silver metallic silk “Hibiki” rug emulates his 3D craft with carved magnolias, and Romanian-born painter Mircea Teleaga’s piece riffs on his “signature layering style of using oil paint to raise the organic motif from the canvas,” which was rendered into the “Limen” rug featuring a hazy, geometric motif with wool and silk.

 

“It was quite interesting to see it all come together, because we started it in 2019,” artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan said during a preview of the collection, also noting that she and the other artists’ collaboration with The Rug Company started three years ago, but was pushed due to the pandemic.

“While collaborating as artists, you can really tell you’re working with a craft-oriented company that cares about how things are made. We were kept in mind with every single step in the design process, and to have the power to approve every single part was great,” she added while sitting on top of her “Euphoria” rug, which boasts a kaleidoscope of silk threads and a collage of botanical patterns around the rug’s perimeter.

 

“And the story is really important,” award-winning jeweler and the fifth artist of the collaboration, Castro Smith, added. “The way the rugs are made in the Himalayas and support craft, community and knowledge. It continues that knowledge to the next generation, that’s a big part of it as well as the arts.”

Inspired by The Rug Company’s Nepalese background and heritage — each rug is woven by expert crafts people with Tibetan wool — Smith’s “Cascade” rug displays billowing clouds and flying birds, as if seen from the Nepalese skyscrape, in wool and silk.

“This collection is symbolic of The Rug Company ethos, representing the importance of keeping craft and community alive,” a statement from the brand said.

Each of the five woven rug designs can be adapted to varying spaces — both residential and commercial — and are priced from $225 a square foot to $330 a square foot, depending on the design.