nanimarquina: the rug, taken seriously

Most furniture retail treats the rug as an accessory — the thing you buy last, to match the sofa. Nani Marquina built a whole house on the opposite conviction: that a rug can be an authored, collectible object, designed and signed like a chair.

Founded in Barcelona in 1987, her studio was among the first to commission rugs from the leading designers of the day — and to credit them on the label.

A roll-call underfoot

The catalogue reads like contemporary design in wool. Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec drew Losanges, an irregular kilim in thirteen reds, and the watercolour-soft Blur. Doshi Levien embroidered the nomadic traditions of Gujarat into Rabari. Jaime Hayon scattered his drawings across Silhouette; Inga Sempé pleated Colorado like fabric caught in light.

A rug can be authored and signed, like a chair — that is the whole idea.

Woven into art

The house also crosses into art outright. Under licence from the estate of Eduardo Chillida, the Basque master's graphic works are woven as limited editions — a museum drawing you can live on.

Hand-made, and certified

Every rug is made by hand in India and Pakistan — hand-loomed, hand-knotted or hand-tufted — from Afghan and New Zealand wools, jute, nettle and recycled cotton. The house is GoodWeave-certified, guaranteeing fair, child-labour-free production.

For Australia, where the authored rug is barely represented, this is the missing category: the piece that finishes a collected room, from the house that invented the idea.