Sigh. I am crushing on Jan Kath. The 37 year-old German contemporary rug designer is blurring elements of traditional rug design with his own signature imperfection and erosion. He is reinventing floor covering and this is not said with an ounce of hyperbole.
Kath is the third generation of his carpet dealing family with roots around Germany. Defiant in his twenties to forge his own way (aren’t we all?), he traveled through Asia and the Middle East, finding himself accidentally in Nepal. Friends of his carpet dealing family offered the rogue a job doing quality control for their rug manufacturing facility that later became a position managing production and eventually, producing his own designs.
He is ultimately self-taught (gasp). A young start to observing the manufacturing process, extensive travel and raw talent have culminated in this outstanding line of rugs that are sure to be of the heirloom variety.
So, toss out everything you know about the modern rug. Without leaning on colour blocking, strong delineation, bold graphics or anything for that matter that has largely defined modern rug design, Kath has gently pushed past and redefined in the process. He has softened lines, been thoughtful in palette building and insanely imaginative borrowing elements from his earliest travels to Iran and Nepal and then deconstructing them. His designs are cool and majestic in one swoop.
“Nobody feels comfortable in clinically styled apartments with highly polished concrete floors,” Kath explains. “Our carpets are an organic dotting of the ‘i’, islands of well-being, which have a healing effect in cool interiors – without destroying the overall style.” Sigh.
His work does just that. Supports without overwhelming. There really isn’t any ego here.
And because of the control of colour and design his pieces provide, more than one can be used in a single space.
I have always struggled with using more than one statement rug in a space. Rooms open to one another? Ok. But I am talking about that great space where architecture or surface do not provide an obvious beginning or end. So I have used the exhausted, albeit useful, bound sisal to unify spaces and some rug layering in adjacent spaces.
Enter Kath. His work is subtle without being understated. His more quiet palettes blend without competing with one another making them ideal for layering in close proximity. And they are utterly transitional – his work is the new classic and I can see his pieces working the full range of styles from contemporary to traditional, from mid century to modern.
Crush may not be a strong enough word.
W Studio (160 Pears Ave. Suite 310) carries Jan Kath exclusively in Toronto.
“We are proud to exclusively offer the Jan Kath collection as it is composed of some of the world’s most beautiful designs,” says Alan Pourvakil, owner and Creative Director of W Studio. “They have very complex weave patterns and combined with the all-natural materials used in their painstaking construction, it creates the most unique hand-woven art that one can own.”