Tufted floor jewelleries and decorative cushions

This work is about getting to know tufting as a technique and to design tufted products for home furnishing. It all began in Finland, where during springtime 2004, I got in contact with the technique of tufting for the first time. A very pleasant meeting that resulted in two carpets and a longing to continue and learn more. It was then that an idea for my final project started to take form. My wish was to design tufted “floor jewelleries” and cushions. I made a base for my project during a design project in autumn 2004. During a stay in New York I got inspired partly from colours and shapes from the Bauhaus movement, partly from the architecture of the city. The geometric forms associated to Bauhaus spoke to me. In New York I got fascinated of the lines and surfaces next to each other on the front of the buildings. The small details were important to the entire impression. The amazing perspectives were also very inspiring. It was a great feeling glancing up buildings that had no end and above all looking down on the top of the buildings and on the streets from the top of Empire state building. The collected material from the design project was then put together with impressions of Swedish nature. So I got the inspiration material that had feeling that was hard, soft, warm, cold, powerful, and fragile. Those emotions have been important to ad to the tufted carpets. Wool was chosen to give the felling of warmth and linen to ad shine. The smooth materials made a nice complement to the strict geometric forms. The group of tufted products contain one big pillow for the floor, seven decorative cushions and four carpets. The pillow for the floor becomes a plain and soft piece of furniture, strict in black and white. The decorative cushion is more colourful and finds its place on a sofa or armchair. The carpets are small and easy to place as “jewelleries” next to or in front of a piece of furniture, on their own, several together, but never with furniture on top. The tufted products fit in both small and big rooms. The little scale makes it easy to change and intensify the expression in a home environment. Through my choice of material I want to give the products a long lifetime. This partly has been a part of the esthetical expression. I have also considered nearby production and ecological alternatives in my choices of materials. A timeless form and colour scale makes the products stand outside trends. That gives the products sustainability and they can be a part of the home for a very long time. The carpets are industrially tufted at Hitex and the cushions are made by me, tufted by hand at Konstnärernas Kollektivverkstad in Gothenburg. An important part of the work was to tuft myself and get a feeling for all the possibilities in that specific technique.Program: TextildesignutbildningenUppsatsnivå: C