Benito Cabañas – Poster art knotted by hand in wool and silk!

For thousands of years hand-knotted rugs have been used as a graphical form of expression through the use of color, texture and material. In our age of interconnectedness and globalization, it is only logical to begin to assume that all forms of graphical expression can instigate personal reflection and introspection. Hand made rugs are not the exception!

Benito Cabañas, a renown poster and graphic artist from the exquisite colonial city of Puebla through his company Abracadabra, participated in Odabashian’s exhibit at the Franz Mayer Museum of decoriative and applied arts in Mexico City called “Tapetes – Anudando historias, enlazando ideas”.

Photo - F. Etulain

His contribution to the collection called “Libertad” (Freedom) is representative of his extraordinary career. In it he follows his exceptional ability to communicate powerful ideas with minimal graphical resources.

Renata Becerril, curator of the exhibit describes:

“For millenia, rugs have always expressed deep graphical symbolism as a secondary function of their intended design use as a surface covering. Geometrical patterns, natural motifs and colors express meanings in each of the geographical locations where the rugs are woven. In his piece, Benito uses contemporary language using the ancient medium”

Benito Cabañas inspects his rug for the first time at the Franz Mayer Museum on opening night.

Odabashian prides itself in promoting and collaborating not only emerging talent across different geographies, but also in applying the best quality to each project. Contact us to explore how we do this!

Emiliano Godoy’s “FM” – Visualizing the invisible on a hand-knotted rug

One of Mexico’s emerging design giants, Emiliano Godoy’s approach to rug design is as brilliant as it is unconventional.

An industrial designer from Pratt Institute’s graduate program (New York, 2004), with a BA degree in industrial design from Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City, 1997) and furniture design studies from the Danish Design School (2003). He runs the design firm Godoylab, and is the design director of the furniture manufacturer Pirwi.

His custom rug, “FM” exhibited at “Tapetes- Anudando Historias, Enlazando ideas” at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City, attempts to reveal what the eye does not see. In this rug design, he materializes invisible FM waves propagating through space through the masterful use of color, material and texture. The statement is a powerful one that re-asserts the observers’ context in reality: Just because sensory inputs a person receives are not perceived, does not mean they are not real.

Renata Becerril, curator of the exhibit quotes Mexican Philosopher Manuel de Landa:

“We live in a world inhabited by a complex mix of geological, biological, social and linguistic structures that are simply clusters formed by and hardened by history”

“FM” was featured on the cover of Estilo Magazine in June 2011 as well as other publications such as Entremuros and Rugdesign Blog.

Photo - F. Etulain

Odabashian is the leading innovator of handmade custom rug design with a strong emphasis on promoting Latin American talent. Contact us to see how we can support your interior project.

Danae Estrada’s refined rug design reflected at the cool new NH Hotel in Queretaro, Mexico

Odabashian’s Miami-based contract/hospitality division recently completed production and delivery for Quarto Creativo’s interiors at the hotel NH in the colonial city of Queretaro, Mexico.

Danae Estrada's "Tree Stump" at the NH Querétaro

Led by Danae Estrada who designed the custom rugs for this project, Quarto Creativo is a boutique interior design firm that has turned traditional business hotels to dynamic and fun meeting spaces. Odabashian has already participated in several of Quarto Creativo’s projects with other NH properties in Mexico.

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With Mexico’s brisk economy flowing in regional cities, more and more of these business hotels are making these destinations very attractive to the business traveller as well as with traditional tourism.

Check out some of our other hotel projects here.

Contact us to see how we can support your hotel or residential interior project.

Paul Cremoux’s “Yuxtaposiciones” gets you thinking and keeps you pondering Sustainability

How does an object d’art transcend its material form into an abstract idea?

The capability of design is so fundamentally revolutionary in nature, that it has the implicit power to influence thoughts. These thoughts have the potential to become trends, and these trends to change our environment….literally.

With his background at UNAM (Mexico), Columbia University (USA) and EPAD (France), Paul uses his multicultural experience to attempt to make a strong statement on the environmental impact of all that we acquire. The design of his rug for the exhibit “Tapetes – Anudando historias, enlazando ideas” which was exhibited at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City in the Spring of 2011, is an exploration in environmental impact and sustainability.

The rug, “Yuxtaposiciones” has references to it’s impact:

Photo - F. Etulain

- The grey and off-white contrasting lines were designed in Mexico and represent a baseline to blur and confuse the eye into one monochromatic color base.

- The colored part of the design are the inscribed woven names of each of the weavers that participated in the actual hand weaving manufacturing process. Furthermore, the colors are selected from the remains of the wool used in the manufacturing process of other custom rugs for Odabashian. Thus, “Yuxtaposiciones” seeks to empower the actual weavers to be an active participant in the composition of the rug itself.

Furthermore, the rug installation is exhibited with a Google Maps detailed trajectory of the logistics that the raw materials, transformation and finished goods underwent throughout the entire process.

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And as a final and clear statement, Paul includes the calculation of the mass of CO2 released by the production of one of these rugs across the entire supply chain process.

Here is a short video of Paul discussing his rug (Spanish)

Contact us to see how we can use our 90-year experience to manufacture one-of-a-kind design rugs for your project.

Paola Calzada’s exquisitely elegant “Espuma”, part of the exhibit at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City.

Architect Paola Calzada is never still.

One of the most active collaborators in Odabashian’s hospitality and luxury residential projects across the globe, Paola brings a fresh, elegant and extremely relevant contribution to the collection that was exhibited at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City in Spring of 2011.

Photo -F. Etulain

Her piece, “Espuma” (“foam” in English”) is a very clear example of the many global sources, references and passions that fill her architectural  and design practice. Not one to shy away from any scale, she focused on her current interest in Japanese aesthetic for “Espuma”.

For “Espuma’s” development, Paola experimented with over twenty patterns, textures, geometrical elements of Japanese style and aesthetic. She has used references ranging from urban Tokyo to graphic art such as Katsushika Hokusai’s graphically intense “Wave off Kanagawa”

Renata Becerril, curator of the exhibit describes the aesthetic:

(Paola’s) final design, seafoam, ocean and the cherry blossom with it’s shadow reminds us of Tanizaki’s writings in his “In Praise of Shadows” where he describes darkness and light as the epitome of his culture. On the dark shadowed surface, Man finds himself. Through this vision he finds philosophical reflections, age and the use of thigs. It is in “Espuma” that the light and shadow have a clear dialogue and help us decipher the image.

Here is a short interview (in Spanish)

Gonzalo Tassier’s “Tapete de Asfalto” – A Safe zone at home.

“I was born with a gift and I feel that my duty is to give it back to others.”

-Gonzalo Tassier 

Recipient of the prestigious Sir Misha Black medal awarded by London’s Royal College of Art in 2008 for extraordinary dedication to design education, Gonzalo Tassier embodies the humility and back-to-basics attitude that is the fundamental charisma sought by many designers across their entire careers.

Gonzalo’s piece, aptly named “Tapete de Asfalto” (Asphalt Carpet) is an exploration into how graphics evoke a very clear emotional response from users. The black wool background and the white silk lines are a representation of the lines on a crosswalk. Crosswalks, are a “safety zone” in a hostile pedestrian environment. A place where one feels safe when crossing the street. At home, around our living room, in our bedroom or in our den, we feel the same sense of security. Shelter is one of the most basic and primordial origins of human design.

Photo -F. Etulain

To see the entire collection of the exhibit at the Franz Mayer, click here.

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Ximena Perez Grobet- “Entrelineas”. Calligraphy, design and introspection

Ximena Perez Grobet is the only visual artist by profession of all the guest designers who participated at the exhibit, “Tapetes – Anudando historias, Enlazando ideas” at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City in April and May 2011.

Ximena’s long experience in editorial design and her fascination with the graphic representation of the written word is apparent in her proposal “Entrelineas” (Eng: “In-between lines”) which is an exquisite and visually stunning hand-knotted rug. Her piece is an introspection in the plasticity of the letters and their forms, not their meaning or the sound of their phonemes. Her translation from a writing medium to a hand-knotted one exaggerates the dimension of the hand-stroke of each character. It is at this large-scale that the aesthetic quality of the calligraphy is appreciated as a form of design: one that is perhaps lost, minimized or overlooked while reading, but generates new feelings and proposals at a large scale.

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This design is limited-edition and can be manufactured in several sizes. Contact us for details.

Dip-Dyed custom rugs for hotels and residential projects!

Check out one our most recent collection for both residential and commercial/contract rugs.

Dip-dying is a technique that has become popular among contemporary designers. The technique uses traditional rugs as the foundation to re-interpret classic patterns in un-conventional and non-traditional colors. This effect is fast becoming very popular among interior architects and designers all over the world.

Contact us if you would like to receive a quote on these custom pieces for your hotel or residential project.

“What Man took”- Ariel Rojo’s sobering environmental statement on a hand-knotted rug

A proud and very conscientious ”Chilango“, Ariel Rojo’s design statements transcend and communicate ideas and feelings that are relevant to almost every context of urban life.

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Renata Becerril, curator of the exhibit “Tapetes – Anudando historias, enlazando ideas” at the Franz Mayer during spring of 2011, has this to say:

Designers play an important role in helping create awareness among users.

Creating an object that uses sustainable materials or techniques, or that it’s concept exposes a subject, are examples in which the designers manifests their active role as change agents.

Ariel Rojo creates scenery that invites you to think and become aware of the rational and irrational use of trees. In addition of being a manifestation about our use of the environment, the rug itself is an experiment both in concept and technique. The horizontal and bidimensional plane is translated to a vertical and volumetric one. A surface becomes an object. An object that, as Ariel explains, can be used as a stool or as a decorative element where you can lean on and meditate about “what Man took away”. 

While designers, as creators of objects of desire, have a great responsibility in the way they react and aswer to certain issues, the consumers are the ones who can really affect and generate change in their environments. That is clearly where the designer’s potential as an instigator and facilitator of reflection and introspection propagates across society. 

Ariel Rojo has been collaborating with Odabashian since 2009 on other projects such as the “Tire Rug” and several hospitality projects in Saudi Arabia and Miami.

His work with Odabashian has been featured several times in Icon Magazine, Habitat (image below) and other design blogs.

Featured on the cover of Habitat Magazine, Mexico. June 2011

Contact us to see how you can use talented designers like Ariel in your custom rug project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jorge Cejudo’s “Paisaje en mi dentro y fuera” – Dichotomy of a woven rug and wall-hanging.

Dichotomy – two parts, different but one whole.

Jorge Cejudo, known as “El Cejas”,  explores this marvelous and relevant idea in his piece, “Paisaje en mi dentro y fuera” (roughly translated to: the view of my in and out). He is one of the 18 participants in the first-of-it’s-kind exhibit “Tapetes – Anudando historias, enlazando ideas” at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City.

He is a graphic designer, but also paints with oil. He uses computers, Photoshop, Illustrator. But he is also very diligent in working with manual formats and techniques.

Here is the interview (in Spanish)

Sky and air are manifested on his rug through his careful selection of color for one of the two halves which is positioned as a tapestry on the wall. While, on the other hand, green and earth tones make up the “floor” side of the rug placed firmly on the ground. This positioning reflects El Cejas’ view of duality and the clear dichotomy of his perception of design: Décor with function. Art with use. El Cejas does not stop his exercise in duality there: he uses traditional Persian design techniques and medallion placement on the rug itself in such a way that it echoes the traditional rugs that were woven in ages past. However, his selection of graphics and iconography are completely re-interpreted and current.

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Odabashian is dedicated to promoting not only emergent design across the globe, but also committed to producing only the highest quality hand-knotted rugs using the best designers. Contact us to see how we can support your interior project.