The Rug Company's Chris Sharp

How did The Rug Company come about?

The best seller of all time is the Paul Smith "Swirl." I famously, when it came in, said, "That’s never going to sell. It’s too colorful – who’s going to buy that?" And we just cannot stop selling them. And Paul’s like, "I cannot believe that we’re still selling something with swirls on it." But people just love it.What new things are in the works?We’ve currently done a collection with a guy called Giles Deacon, who’s a British fashion designer. Someone asked me today, "Do you try and work with celebrity designers?" Absolutely not. When people come in, they don’t say, "I’m looking for a Paul Smith or a David Rockwell rug." They say, "I love that one – who designed it?" You have to be very careful that you don’t name-collect. I think it’s a recipe for disaster. People are pretty cynical, they can see when you’re doing that. What we try to look for are people who are going to bring something interesting to the collection.What is Giles bringing to it?He’s quite challenging as a designer. He’s got quite sort of hard and abrasive images. One rug is chicken wire. Another one is studs. And another one is chains. They’re not images you’d think would work well. But then what he’s done is used very soft colors and material.You’re about to start working with Diane von Furstenberg—that’s a name.She is fabulous. We’re just about to do a collection of dhurries. And we’re going back through her archives and looking at a bunch of her vintage prints.You mean you’re going to transform some of her wrap dresses into rugs?Yes, some of the vintage prints, which will be fun.Who else is launching in the collection?

We’ve just done David Rockwell. David’s done something quite beautiful – he’s designed rugs that actually sell. [laughs] All of the designers come from a different point of view. Some designers, like David, think, "If I was doing a project, what would I put in it, what’s going to work?" Other designers, like Jaime Hayon – he’s a Spanish product designer – he’ll want to do something wild and crazy and off the wall, he’s not necessarily thinking about where it’s going to end up.

There’s a big difference between working with product designers and fashion designers. Fashion designers are the quickest and easiest. Product designers are very much thinking that it’s going to be part of their legacy. They can be incredibly ponderous. One particular well-known product designer, we did seven full rugs in the course of three years before he was happy with it. And each time he’d come in and go, "This is good, it’s almost there. But I’m just not quite sure."Who was it?Ron Arad.How did your wall hanging for the Obamas come about?When David Cameron came into office in England, we sent him one of our wall hangings, as a present. It was called "The Jubilee." It’s a Union Jack, and it’s got a dagger, and so forth. Six weeks before the Obamas arrived in England, we got a phone call from Downing Street saying that they wanted to do a custom tapestry for the Obamas as the state gift, from Britain to America. But we only had six weeks, so we decided to take the original one that we’d done and change it, make it more suitable for America – we put an eagle on it, and some flags, that sort of thing. It’s fun.Did they like it?Apparently they loved it. But they’d have to say that, wouldn’t they?