Timed to coincide with the annual London Design Festival (LDF), luxury rug company Tai Ping launches its new London showroom on Monday 14 September 2020 with a bespoke immersive design by Sarah Izod. Designed as a street-facing gallery space, the Pelham Street showroom is just off Brompton Cross—an area anchored by the landmark Michelin House and a short walk from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Tai Ping’s move from trade-centred Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour to a creative and commercial hub signposts the company’s diversification into the B2C (business to consumer) market to operate in parallel with Tai Ping’s bespoke and customisable rugs to the trade.
The showroom’s inaugural exhibition features Tai Ping’s new ‘Home’ collection of twenty-one rugs designed for the B2C residential market in programmed colours and sizes. The exhibition features ‘hero’ rugs representing each of Home’s six collections—Naive, Art, Marks, Junior, Traceable, and Guest List. Handmade from natural materials including New Zealand wool and silk, Home includes designs by six international designers (Guest List), and playful yet sophisticated designs (Junior) for children or adults who like pops of intriguing colour mixes.
Sarah Izod’s showroom design for the street-facing double-fronted windows is based on an immersive and 3D mirrored experience. Her window treatment is ‘layered’ against an architectural theatrical sleight opposite the showroom on the south side of Pelham Street: a snaking single-storey 19th-century brick building with blanked windows disguises a ‘covered cutting’ of the London Underground system.
While visitors may not notice the double theatrical layering reference, they will instantly appreciate the immersive experience of stepping from an urban streetscape into a world of reflection. Izod’s architectural and verdant references align with the design objectives of Tai Ping’s Design Manager Rachel Joyce. Five of the six collections within Home were designed by Joyce who acknowledges the influence of London’s natural and built environments on the collection: ‘Each design was inspired by the colours of mid-summer leaves, elegant London lanes, the whispering grey of architectural streets.’
Izod’s window installation is foregrounded in the showroom by two rugs from the Naive and Art Collections. Verdure—an abstract landscape of oval leaf shapes encircled by black—creates a gemstone-like field, a design that reflects the company’s description of its rugs as ‘hand-crafted jewels’. Adjacent to Verdure is Philtre (the word describes a mythical love potion), a dreamy abstract design in a palette of turquoise, slate, grey and white.
Walk-ins are welcome at the Pelham Street showroom. Non-trade buyers interested in purchasing from the Home collection will be redirected to select retailers. Sarah Izod’s installation will be on view until the end of September.
