58
Spring 2014
59
Issue 34
The McQueen studio is bringing its
characteristic dark wit and playfulness
to an exuberant new series of rugs and
tapestries for The Rug Company.
Jonathan R. Jones investigates
02
Sex and drugs
01
...and interior design
T
‘‘
he Rug Company is the brain-child of Suzanne and
Christopher Sharp. Their interest in rugs was first piqued
when Christopher accepted a role on a TV station
start-up in Saudi Arabia. Captivated by what they saw in Saudi
markets, they initially bought for themselves, before importing
rugs from further afield with a view to selling them from
home. Eventually they set up their first shops in Malta, where
Suzanne had grown up.
Six years later the couple returned to London, where
they had first met. In 1997 they founded The Rug Company
and commissioned their first rugs. They have since worked
with big hitters of contemporary British design including
Ron Arad, Tom Dixon and Paul Smith, as well as renowned
interior designers like Nina Campbell and Neisha Crosland,
while also championing lesser-known artists and designers.
The Sharps have a particular affiliation with fashion, and the
Alexander McQueen studio range fits within an impressive
roster of designers that Susanne and Christopher have lured
from catwalk to living room, including Giles Deacon, Vivienne
Westwood and Matthew Williamson.
Previous works in the McQueen collection have
incorporated images that suggest the ephemeral: delicate
feathers, the iconic McQueen skull and hummingbirds caught
in flight, surrounded by smoke depicted with photo-realist
accuracy. The new rugs are aflutter with butterflies. And here
the move from catwalk to interior is more explicit than ever,
since the butterflies seem to have flown straight from the
Spring/Summer 2011 McQueen Collection. Presented at Paris
Fashion Week in 2010, the collection was poignant, as it was
the first to be seen after McQueen had taken his own life just
Flowers have
long been a
memento mori,
their ephemeral
beauty a metaphor
for our short
existence
’’
61
Issue 34
seven months earlier. The collection designed by Sarah Burton
was full of McQueen trademarks – a vision of nature gone
dark with leaves, feathers and butterflies crawling across the
body – but with a lighter, more feminine sensibility. The pieces
showed a woman being “taken back by nature” who was
“powerful yet tender”, in Burton’s own words. And it is exactly
this quality that the butterfly iconography brings to The Rug
Company collection.
The monarch butterfly gives its name to the rugs. The
tawny-orange of the butterfly’s wings is recast in red for
Monarch Fire and a monochrome palette for Monarch Smoke.
The references to burning hint at transformation, like that of
the life cycle of the butterfly. They offer an ironic take on the
traditional animal rug. Where we might expect to find the
spoils of the hunt – a zebra or tiger skin – instead we find the
fragile wings of a butterfly underfoot.
Of course, the company’s creations are built to last (indeed
this is part of the brand’s ‘mission statement’). And they are
certainly at the investment end of the average shopper’s
budget. It is therefore somewhat paradoxical that these robust
rugs depict butterfly wings – the most delicate of materials.
And there is a telling self-reference in the fact that they are
made of silk. A conceptual circle is completed, since the silk
worms that were responsible for producing the rug’s raw
material would have one day become winged creatures like
those depicted in the rug’s motif.
LIGHT and dARK
The collection also includes two wool Aubusson wall hangings:
Poppy Day and Poppy Night. The duality of light and dark is a
common theme in McQueen’s work, as is the idea of ‘splitting’,
borne out in ink-blot-like symmetries of the designs. The choice
of poppies as subject matter seems significant. Of course they
are immediately visually alluring – overblown, baroque, and
complex. But there is also a kind of sexualised nature at play
here. Pink and red ruffles call to mind the gynocentric art of
Georgia O’Keeffe and her flower paintings. But poppies also
offer a sinister narcotic reference, since they are the source
of opiate drugs.
Flowers have long been a memento mori (a reminder
of death), their ephemeral beauty a metaphor for our short
existence. And in western European history the image of
poppies cannot be separated from the flowers that bloomed
on the fields of northern France after the First World War. In
this sense they seem the perfect foil to McQueen’s fascination
with all things military, also seen in the earlier ceremonialdress-inspired designs for The Rug Company. So sex, narcotic
pleasure and death all find their way into the nexus of
associations of the poppy.
It seems then that these new visually alluring works,
masquerading as polite interior decoration, are not so far from
McQueen’s core interests. Given the designer’s premature
death they offer an even more haunting statement on the
fragility and fleeting beauty of life.
www.therugcompany.com
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01 Poppy Night, Aubusson
tapestry wallhanging,
Alexander McQueen for
The Rug Company
03 Monarch Fire,
handknotted silk carpet,
Alexander McQueen for
The Rug Company
02 Poppy Day, Aubusson
tapestry wallhanging,
Alexander McQueen for
The Rug Company
04 Pony, handknotted
wool carpet, Alexander
McQueen for The
Rug Company
04
05 Monarch, wool and
silk Aubusson cushion,
Alexander McQueen for
The Rug Company
05