When you think about the mediums through which an artist may seek creative expression, rugs are not what come to mind. And yet, even a cursory glance across the designs by Kavita Chau-dhary of Jaipur Rugs will make you reconsider your earlier notions.
From designs that put tradition in the foreground to those that shine with a modern edge, her work seems to comprise a rug for every kind of sensibility and taste. It is perhaps her versatility and contemporary edge that has led to one of her creations — the Anthar rug — being nominated for the German Design Awards, 2016. Walking us through her journey so far, the young design graduate from SAIC, Chicago- talks about her urge to keep growing, her love for contradictions and more.
Having never planned to join her father’s business at Jaipur Rugs, Kavita went to the US with a view to explore the possibilities before her, keeping her love for design in mind, oscillating between interior and fashion designing. Discovering an affinity for textiles in the process, she eventually headed over to Chicago to study textile design.
“SAIC brought out the artist in me,” she shares and adds that while she had never been able to see the art that lay in rugs when she was a child, the more time she spent around her father’s company as she grew older, the more drawn she felt to the design function there. Mentored by her father, mother and elder sisters, she now stands as an internationally recognised designer with several awards to her credit. “I still have a long way to go. A few years ago, I reconnected with myself and have been, since then, trying to bring the artisan in me back to life through the work I do. I think the one thing that has propelled me onwards has been a sense of curiosity — I have been exploring what beauty means to people from different backgrounds and that has helped me find my own unique sense of beauty,” she affirms.
The designer’s work traverses myriad influences ranging from the ‘Lacuna’ collection that resonates with memories of bygone eras through high knot-count carpets featuring classic, old world patterns to her most recent ‘Project Error’ line that studies the concept of misprints and abounds in spontaneous designs born out of the crossroads of mechanical precision and natural accident. “I have realised over the years that I am naturally attracted to some things — the coming together of opposites like structured and unstructured, light and shadow, muted and bold, conservative and progressive that is how my design sensibility has evolved,” she shares and adds, “I am always attracted to nature’s way of expressing wear and tear, and also to its hidden underlying structure. This is probably why I love designs that have a handmade, spontaneous feel while I also like geometric patterns.”
Kavita, who deeply admires designers Cy Twombly and Jean Mitchell Basquiat, affirms that the rugs she designs are not simply an aesthetic product, but also expressions of the communities that have made them historically. “Handmade rugs capture the souls of those who make them. And I hope this form of expression grows as much as it can as time goes on,” she concludes.
