Contemporary Designer Rugs — Hand-Knotted Modern & Exclusive Styles

Contemporary designer rugs — hand-knotted, made to order

These are modern designs made by the oldest method there is. The drawing comes from a studio; the weaving happens on a loom in the Kathmandu Valley, knot by knot, in Tibetan highland wool, silk, or a blend. What that buys you over a machine-made rug is surface: hand-spun yarn takes dye unevenly enough that the colour has depth, the pile lies in one direction so the tone shifts as you cross the room, and a high-low weave gives you actual relief rather than a printed impression of it.

Most pieces here are woven to order in your size and palette. A few are one-offs, and those are the ones that sell first.

The lines

Makalu Design

Our main designer programme, woven in Kathmandu in three lines: Makalu Edition for limited pieces, Makalu Domus for residential work, and Makalu Century for transitional designs that sit between classical and modern. Around 1,200 colour recipes and six knot qualities, all of it configurable.

Ocean Silk and Sabah

Modernist colour fields and architectural compositions in silk and silk-wool, several of them using a high-low structure where silk areas are cut lower than the wool ground so the pattern is felt as well as seen. Signed and numbered.

Art Edition

Limited editions translating twentieth-century abstract painting — Klee, Kandinsky and related modernism — into knotted textile. These are interpretations rather than reproductions, and each is woven in a numbered run.

Perfect Plains

Single-colour rugs in wool, mulberry silk, wool-silk or bamboo silk (viscose). The quiet option when the room already has enough to look at. See the Perfect Plains collection.

Materials

• Tibetan highland wool — hand-spun from the Changthang plateau, with its natural lanolin left in. Resilient, and dirt tends to sit on the fibre rather than working into it. The right choice wherever the rug will actually be walked on.
• Mulberry silk — the finest lustre and the sharpest detail, used for highlights or for whole fields. Best where traffic is light.
• Bamboo silk (viscose) — a regenerated cellulose fibre with a strong sheen at a much lower price than real silk. Technically and legally it is viscose, and we label it that way.
• Knot densities — approx. 60 kpsi (Naturals), 80 (Elegance), 100 (Luxury) and 150 kpsi (Executive) for fine pictorial work.

Commissions for architects and designers

Every design here can be commissioned in a custom size, palette and pattern. The process: we work from your plans, samples or mood boards, produce a hand-painted strike-off for approval, confirm the dye lots against your references, and weave the piece in our partner workshops in Kathmandu. Typical lead time is three to six months, and shaped rugs, stair pieces and oversize formats are all possible. There is a trade programme for interior designers and architects — details on the made-to-measure rugs page.

Living with a designer rug — an honest note

Colour is the thing to be careful about. A screen shows you emitted light; a rug shows you reflected light, and a shade that looks warm on a monitor can read grey in a north-facing room. For a commission, judge from the physical strike-off and look at it in the actual room, at the time of day the room is used. For a piece bought from stock, ask us for a photograph in daylight before you decide.

Where silk or viscose is used, it will flatten faster than wool in a walking line, and high-low weaves collect a little more dust in the recessed areas. Neither is a problem in a sitting room or a bedroom; both are reasons to specify wool if the rug is going in a hall or under a dining table.

And a new hand-knotted rug sheds for its first three to six months. It stops on its own.

At a glance

• Construction: hand-knotted, Tibetan loop knot, in the Kathmandu Valley
• Materials: highland wool, mulberry silk, wool-silk, bamboo silk (viscose), linen blends
• Knot densities: approx. 60 to 150 kpsi
• Sizes: stock pieces and made to measure in any format
• Lead time for commissions: approximately three to six months
• Underfloor heating: suitable across the designer programme
• Label STEP Fair Trade: fair wages, no child labour, monitored working conditions

Care

Vacuum in the direction of the pile without a rotating brush bar — on a plain or high-low surface a brush bar leaves visible tracks. Turn the rug once or twice a year so daylight falls evenly; strong colours and plain grounds show uneven fading soonest. Blot spills rather than rubbing, and do not soak viscose. A hand wash every few years restores the lustre that dust takes out of wool and silk alike. Customers in Germany can use our washing and repair service, with collection and return in the Würzburg region; elsewhere we are glad to help you find a specialist nearby.

Related collections

Perfect Plains · Tibetan and Nepalese rugs · Tibetan tiger rugs · Living room rugs · Made-to-measure rugs