Pargy Chats with Sonya Winner.

Pargy previously stumbled upon the beautiful rugs made by Sonya Winner earlier on this year (not literally though you understand), and wrote a post about the stunning Fauvist inspired collection, “After Matisse”. I finally caught up with Sonya herself at Tent London, as part of London Design Festival, and she kindly let me into a few secrets about the making process for these incredible works of Art…

Hello Sonya and welcome to Pargy!

Thank you!

Please tell us about more about your background and how you came to start making rugs?

I trained as a graphic designer, and ran a small graphic design consultancy for 12 years creating branding, literature, packaging and corporate identities – but always dreamed about creating my own brand and selling something that I had created myself. I then morphed into a portrait photographer which was a lot of fun – I still do some portrait photography from time to time. Six years ago I was invited to design a rug for the Aram as part of the AD40  show –  When I saw my small paper design translated into a 3D wool rug I realised, for the first time, how a rug can totally transform a room creating warmth, interest, lightening the mood and also dramatically changing acoustics – especially where wood and stone floors have been used. I was immediately bitten by the ‘rug bug’ – and wanted to create more designs in that wonderful media.

 

 

I first came across your work earlier this year when I spotted your gorgeous “After Matisse” rug collection. How do you get the colours so vibrant for these designs?!

Getting the colours right takes a lot of time. I need to get to a very calm quiet place in my head to start really understanding the colours and how they work with one another. The vibrancy is created by placing exactly the right colours to offset one another other to give the desired effect. The shades need to be exactly right to get the vibrancy I am looking for. Colour is fascinating – the more I work with colour the more I learn – mixing shades and juxta-positioning them in certain ways can have startling effects.

Please tell Pargy readers a bit more about more about where your rugs are made, and the process itself.

Some of my rugs are hand knotted on the loom in the Kathandu Valley and others are hand tufted in Northern India. Both processes involve the same preparation work; selecting the correct wool or silk quality, dying to get the correct colour and mapping out the plan of how to weave the rug. They also both require the same finishing work – hand carving with razor sharp scissors and hand finishing to get the detail right.

Hand knotting is done in The Kathmandu Valley. It takes more time – a weaver can knot a maximum of 10cm at 100 knots in one day but the quality of the end product is worth the wait! Hand knotted rugs also undergo a lengthy washing, stretching and drying process.

Hand tufting also done by experienced crafts people mainly in India– is a quicker process. The rug is created on a stretched canvas and wool is shot through the canvas with a hand tufting tool. I returned from Kathmandu and India recently – check out my blog to see images for both these processes 

 What sorts of places do you go to for design inspiration?

I love to look at the colours in nature, tropical flowers, insects, birds etc. I also get a lot of inspiration from painters, sculpture and other designers. Whenever possible I visit galleries – and enjoy being a member of the Tate, The Royal Academy and The Contemporary Arts Society and browsing magazines and visiting markets.