// RUG STAR by Jürgen Dahlmanns

RUG STAR BERLIN
Mulackstr. 4
10119 Berlin - Germany
Tel.: +49 30 66668315
Fax: +49 30 66668317
Mail: info@rug-star.de

store & office hours:
mon- fri: 10 am – 7 pm // sat: 12 am – 7 pm

RUG STAR ZÜRICH
Zweierstrasse 25
8004 Zuerich - Swiss
Fon: +41 (0)44 450 31 51
Fax: +41 (0)44 450 31 52
Mail: info@rug-star.ch

store hours:
wed- fri: 10 am – 5 pm // sat: 10 am – 6 pm

// The RUG ADDICT & his good fellows, collection 2008 of RUG STAR by Jürgen Dahlmanns

Hello everybody and welcome to „The RUG ADDICT and his good fellows“, our 5 year anniversary collection 2008.

About the good fellows in the RUG ADDICT collection:

We advanced our RUG ADDICT collection in March/April 2007 with a series of hand drawings. The structure is like Jazz, but the content is like a pop song! The whole collection is a loose union of 10 memories, based around childhood dreams and the garden of my grandma. At the heart of it all there is this magic Prozac-green apple tree and the many ‘good fellows’ living in and around it. Anne drew animals with her left hand and when she was done, I took the cassis juice we were drinking and just dripped it over the drawings… some of the pieces of paper had holes and when they dried, they where stuck to the wooden floor!

I left for Nepal, all designs where printed but the design process was not finalized! I decided to add lyrics of pop songs on top of the drawings, but this happened while I was in the workshop in Bhaktapur between the looms and the 400 workers. In my laguagge I had 4 kilos of print outs and 50 CDs… all stuff from Johnny Cash, John Denver and all the stuff my mother listened to while she was a ‘flower power’ girl.

What a wild mix, I came with this old fashion hippy stuff and the weavers throw modern Hindi music at me. Now there is a monkey named Elvis, two straight acting water horses, a mouse which felt in love to a wheat spike, a zombie rabbit, a little white bird and some we will not name at this place.

During 2008 you will get to know all of them, stay tuned...

An introduction in general:

my team and I, we are 100% RUG ADDICTS, we love what we do, we love each rug and if it is less as it could be we are angry, because there is already to much useless rubbish in this world, with no love and no passion and no sense.

Our rugs are naughty and smart, the same combination I like at people. We do not create repeating patterns or soft structures but supercharged landscapes with life and colour which are similar to your behavior. All rugs are designed in Berlin-Town and produced in Himalaya-Mountains in only one workshop in Bhaktapur in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

I am happy that our workshop is located in Bhaktapur and not in Kathmandu, because it is an old brick stone city, where cars are only allowed if they have a public function. I always go there in March and September, each time for four weeks and always stay at the same place. At 7 PM it is dark and last visitors mostly left at this time to get back to Kathmandu. Than there are only sounds of dogs and wooden sticks slamming against the bricks and me watching KLL BILL on my Sky channel because in Berlin I have no TV in my house. The days I spend in the workshop, try to understand more about the relation between social process of work and the charisma of the final product.

About rugs in general:

I am delighted if a completed carpet rubs the wrong way at first glance.

At a second, the smoothness of the fabric, the distribution of wool and silk on

an expanse emerge: The changing light in the course of a day also changes the carpet’s expression. The quality of the fabric decides, whether a carpet ages or matures. The carpet develops new aspects and its reflection of light becomes more varied. Hereby the sensuous element of the hand-knotted Tibetan is the balance between fragility and durability and the ability to reflect the atmosphere of a room.

But I am an architect,

so it is also important to talk about the architectural aspects of rugs and especially the Tibetan area rug:

A rug is the most liberal form of creating a space in a space without erecting obstacles. Coming from this school of thought, I view the carpet as liberal architecture and my aim is to treat the carpet as its original intent: as a piece of room-creating furniture.

And because it is textile it is most intimate like for example our bed.

I love the fusion of old traditional handicraft methods and contemporary exercise of pattern, colour and material. Senseless use of pattern is like watching commercials on TV. We belief that pattern have the potential to interfere into rooms and they can be used to solve architectural problems.

In its origin Tibet, carpets have a practical and isolating function and are characterised by a dense and high nap. The Tibetan highlands wool equips the carpets with its woofs a lively character and the wool can show new sides with increased usage. In this context we work not only with the finest Tibetan wool, but we also use cutting edge images and colour schemes. They acquire personality; at the same time they rebel in the rank order of the classical and modern design. With 100 – 150 knots they have, for Tibetan standards, an unusually high knot density that underlines the virtuosity of the production process and the handling of the handling of the motives.

But most important:

Hand knotted rugs are packed with labor work!

A rug is a commitment of 4-6 people having the same rhythm for 3-4 month. The harmony of the hand knotted rug is equal to the harmony of the process of production. Social unbalanced structures can be seen in the disharmony of the knots on the backside of a rug. We should only produce in case we are sure that it is fair trade. Producer and consumer are responsible for working condition with global consequences. We are 100% against child labor and support a strict control of rug production and living conditions of our wavers in our workshop, because of this reason we are license holder of Rug Mark, and even though we are very very small, the workshop made ranking place 2 and 3 of best conditions for the people in the last 3 years.

If you need further information or if you like to publish our products I would be happy to write you a personal text according to the pictures you picked!

About us and I:

I was born 1967 in Holland, close to the border to Germany and I am German. At the age of six Francois Villon with the voice of Klaus Kinski was talking lyrics into my childs head. Or I had to listen to Dark Side of the Moon, so I think my parents where cool and easy at this time of their life. 10 years later I moved to Berlin and finished High School at a school in Kreuzberg named by a German writer: Hermann Hesse.

In Berlin with his division and the wall surrounding the daily life like a strange and long sleep or protection, I studied political science, later I choose the profession of an architect.

With my diploma I moved to Vienna and worked. After being three years a project manager of the construction site of the Museumsquartier I moved back to Berlin.

In October 2002 I founded RUG STAR by Jürgen Dahlmanns and since than this profession became passion that cannot be restrained.

At the moment the workshop in Nepal grew to a point, that it has already the social structure of a small village, including 400 workers with their 156 children. The workshop has a child day care, a school and a little hospital. In spring and autumn I spend mostly a full month their, happy and proud.

Besides this obsession, I started working as a designer for other companies. The best known of these its the Swedish furniture store IKEA.

Now RUG STAR is a team out of 5 people. For me it is a small family in Berlin- Germany and a big family in Bhaktapur- Nepal.

But this would not consider all. We do have brilliant and funny traders in 15 different countries and it feels like a micro cosmos, connected through the products of the workshop in Nepal, the hand knotted Tibetan area rug. I am very grateful for this.

Thank you for your concentration,

Jürgen Dahlmanns

// Webdesign and Production

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