Rugs

Irregular rules

The collection has 25 designs

Antoniolupi has deepened its relationship with Gumdesign

Volumi is the new range of rugs designed by Gumdesign for Antoniolupi: a collection with irregular shapes that plays with perception.

‘Volumi is the new collection that extends the range of the Tramato carpets that trace everyday living. Vertical, horizontal and oblique lines intertwine with coloured backgrounds and generate unexpected spaces and perspectives, geometries that chase each other in a contrast between white, black and the Antoniolupi colour palette,’ says Gumdesign.

Best known for its bathroom products, this is Antoniolupi’s third rug collection. Volumi takes up the timeless black and white palette, while introducing an extra touch of colour: terracotta red. A warm brushstroke of colour that helps to animate the two-dimensional surface

of the carpet. A disruptive and unexpected detail that transforms the rug into a sort of abstract painting.

It's not just colour, though. The rugs come to life from the encounter between lines and geometric backgrounds: inclined lines that define new perspectives, geometric backgrounds that convey a sensation of movement and depth. A balance of full and empty, of light and dark, of thin parallel or perpendicular lines that outline welldefined areas of different dimensions. Optical effects that give dimensionality to the surface, creating ‘volumes’ that are decorative without taking up space.

The classic rectangular, square and round formats leave room for asymmetrical and deconstructed compositions. A contemporary interior trend that Gumdesign has interpreted in a new and original way. The result is 25 rugs with unusual shapes that can adapt to very different environments and styles: from the bathroom to the living room, from the entrance to the bedroom. Visit: www.antoniolupi.it

On board

Sea Shell

Being trapped at sea inspired Deirdre Dyson’s 2022 collection

‘During one of the lockdowns I found myself marooned on a boat for nearly three months, as we couldn’t get ashore without isolating,’ says Deirdre Dyson. So, like great artists before her – Turner, Monet and Katsushika Hokusai – her muse became the endless sea surrounding her. It’s this extraordinary experience that serves as the basis for the All At Sea collection.

What began as a sailing holiday around the Guadeloupe islands was taken off course by changes in lockdown restrictions. Dyson decided to extend her time offshore rather than dock and have to quarantine. This surreal period became a life raft while the Covid-19 pandemic took hold of the world.

‘Being on the sea can be both peaceful

Shallows (on floor) and Aquarelle

Sunset Starfish Splash

Sunlit (top) and Sun Shaft Golden Glints

Sun Shaft

and threatening. The sheer moving volume is hard to comprehend, as is the hidden life below,’ says the artist.

The previous year, Dyson had explored the Greek Polyaigos islands by boat and been transfixed by the movement of water – the way it transforms and reflects in sunlight, especially close to the cliffs, which ‘changed the colour of the sea in various lights’. In response, she began documenting everything on her iPad as material for future designs.

Using the time afloat in lockdown productively, she contrasted photographs from her Greece trip with what she saw in the Caribbean. ‘The sea became my inspiration and the collection gave me something to think about and work on.

‘To translate the pictures into designs, I expanded them to get close to the waves and then abstracted areas worth working on. It was an easy task as I’ve always been fascinated by the light patterns the sun makes in shallow water.’

The nine designs include Aquarelle, which incorporates a rainbow of all the colours of the ocean with 21 different shades, and Golden Glints and Sunlit, which interplay wool and silk to illustrate the reflections of the colours of the cliffs. Shallows concentrates on the flow of water; Sun Shaft depicts the light pouring through a tunnel. The unusually shaped Sea Shell, based on concentric repetitions of the design, demonstrates that rugs don’t have to be regular in form, while Starfish is taken from a photograph of a blue starfish in shallow waters.

The collection has a medley of blues, ranging from navy, indigo, cobalt, aqua, turquoise and sea green through to smoke and baby blue. White silk is used sparingly in some designs to recreate the flickering reflections of the sun. Visit: www.deirdredyson.com