The Art of Spanish Collaboration
Published
Design icon Patricia Urquiola collaborated with Haworth and fellow Spanish design heavyweight GAN to create a series of sumptuous rugs that add a pop of personality to any workspace.
Gandio Blasco began over sixty years ago as a textile manufacturer in the heart of Valencia, Spain. As a family-run design company, their high quality rug offerings are branded under the name GAN, and the company is wholly dedicated to socially conscious manufacturing in India. As part of their passion for design, GAN frequently collaborate with both rising talent, and the more established design names in the industry, including Patricia Urquiola, Nendo’s Oki Sato, and Borja Garcia.
For their Bandas and Mangas ranges, GAN collaborated with Patricia Urquiola to create a series of rugs that highlight the beauty of wool as a textile, and the skill of Indian weavers who have worked with the fabric for generations. Urquiola has made a name for herself as a contemporary design giant, through both her architectural and design work, with collaborations with design icons such as Moroso, Alessi and, of course, Haworth. Working closely with Haworth, Urquiola revitalised the Bandas and Mangas collections with new and exclusive designs, measurements and colours.
The Bandas collection is a playful take on pushing modularity to the extreme. With the design community focused on flexibility, versatility and agile working and living, modular design has been a powerful philosophy at the heart of contemporary design. The Bandas collection is a series of versatile rugs, seating modules, poufs, and cushions that came in an array of rich patterns and colours. Crafted with a mixture of techniques from hand loom, to embroidery and crochet, the hand woven rugs are created with pure wool, showing a world of versatility with the textile.
Like the Bandas collection, the Mangas range also holds modularity close to heart, and emphasises the tactility of the rugs. Mangas in Spanish can be translated to ‘sleeves’, and the bold stripes and mix of fabric texture in the Mangas range are akin to that found in a cozy sweater. Crafted using hand operated looms, the technique allows for the easy back-and-forth of finishes throughout the rugs.
With Haworth and Urquiola’s careful attention, the rug collections are a playful pop of personality into any environment, making themselves right at home in any space.
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