A beautiful and compelling short film is an out-of-the-ordinary marketing idea for most rug companies, but it’s not an unusual decision for FLOOR_STORY—a company known for its innovative social media marketing. The process of creating the 19-19 rug collection—a collaboration between two award-winning companies, Child Studio and FLOOR_STORY—was filmed by Nepal-based Labesh Shrestha. The four-minute film premieres at COVER Connect, 12-15 January 2021. Narration-free with an evocative score that features Apsara Calling (2016) by CloZee, the impatient among us need to read on for a taster about the background to the collaboration that inspired the film.
Child Studio is an emerging design company set up by founders Che Huang and Alexy Kos. Readers of design magazines and online design portals will have undoubtedly seen one of Child Studio’s signature projects that combines two ‘ingredients’—pizza and the colour pink. Humble Pizza on London’s famous King’s Road was designed by Child Studio in a single colour. The pink pizzazz of the exterior and interior caught the attention of Simon Goff, founder of FLOOR_STORY, and the collaboration of some eighteen months’ duration began. (And for those who watch FLOOR_STORY’s beautifully produced film, keep an eye out for the delightful pink office of the manager of FLOOR_STORY’s weaving facility.)
The 19-19 collection is ethically handwoven (GoodWeave certified) in Nepal from wool and silk. Inspiration for the collection’s strong colours and bold graphics was provided by the famous early 20th-century design movement known as the Bauhaus.
The collection’s title references 1919—the founding year of the Bauhaus school. The collection’s six rugs borrow the given names of female designers who were pivotal to the development and legacy of the Bauhaus—Alma (Siedhoff-Buscher), Lucia (Moholy), Gunta (Stölzl),Otti (Berger), Benita (Koch-Otte), and Anni (Albers).
Collectively, the women’s design output was prevailingly rectilinear and geometric. Child Studio interpreted the women’s design legacy as rugs with ‘collage-like geometric compositions’ that feature ‘soft curved shapes’ in keeping with a current 21st-century design trend for swoops and lozenge shapes, and with colourways that reflect ‘gradients in vivid shades of aquamarine, ruby, violet and red’.
