From Vision to Perfect Product: Founder of Crayon Artel talks with COVER Editor Lucy Upward

I first featured the rugs of Edward Wakefield’s young brand back in 2021 (COVER 65). The name Crayon Artel had only just been decided on and-after a few unsuccessful attempts-the rug Mr Happy Face had been hand knotted in Iran in collaboration with a friend of Wakefield’s residing in the country.

The striking rug design was quite a masterpiece, and was followed by several collaborations with artists. I was aware that the brand was still in action, but not how much it had changed.

This year, during Milan Design Week in April, I met up with Wakefield at his exhibition with vintage furniture company Curiouz, near Bar Basso. There I found out that the brand had developed, grown and become very ambitious.

How did Crayon Artel go from a rug brand to a design agency that can produce rugs or 3D objects for clients?

It was never really a rug brand-it was a production capability that led with rugs. The plan came together around 2021 while I was studying in China. It started with a focus on Persian rugs, but I realised that this was too niche.

Over the years, it evolved into a team sitting between exceptional craftspeople and the artists and designers who want truly bespoke work.

The muscle is the same whatever the output: take an artist’s or designer’s intent, turn it into a spec a workshop can execute perfectly, and manage it to delivery. I’d spent four years at VoxelMatters covering industrial 3D printing and co-founded Form Farm, a 3D printing company in Johannesburg, so I was already well-versed in the digital-to-physical side of things.

A hand-knotted rug is the oldest high-resolution surface there is: you’re placing physical pixels, knot by knot. Sculpture is the same translation problem with different hardware.

The real turning point was Atang Tshikare’s SEBABATSO bronze in 2024. Honestly, helping artists make art is what gives me the most reward in this life. Rugs are one medium, and interior designers are a form of artist. Working to Atang’s standards-he’s gallery-represented, has collaborated with Dior, has work in The Met-raised our production across the board.

How does your previous experience feed into how the company looks today? 

Working at Palace Skateboards taught me how credibility is earned in culture. VoxelMatters gave me four years talking to the people building the most sophisticated production technology on the planet. And six years of living nomadically made working across continents and cultures feel pretty ‘normal’ to me.

Crayon Artel is those three fused-we work with the most ancient and the most advanced means of making.

How have you managed to find all these different production sites for different projects? 

India and Nepal happened differently, at different times. India has better access to synthetic materials and the equipment for larger scale production, tufting, power-loom work. We had a project that needed performance rugs which only that infrastructure could deliver. One company introduces you to another, who introduces you to an agent, who introduces you to a friend of his.

Eventually I flew in from the Netherlands, my business partner Dino flew up from South Africa, and we met in India to see it first-hand. We’ve since built an entire line of rugs out of that capability.

Nepal was the same method with longer vetting. You think a supplier is right, discover they’re not, switch, start again. These days we even move materials between the two countries, which is an adventure of its own.

Beyond that there’s Johannesburg through Form Farm for 3D printing, a workshop in China that fabricates large-scale sculpture for some of the world’s leading contemporary artists, and project partners where the work demands it.