In the previous post we looked at a collaboration between a fashion designer and a group of artisans; let's focus today on the results of a collaboration between an interior designer and a team of craftspeople.
The Rossana Orlandi Design Gallery displayed at the beginning of September during Milan Design Week (cancelled last year and postponed from April to September 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic), the "Plastic Rivers nº 6 – Ganges" rug. Conceived as an "object-manifesto" and designed by Spanish Álvaro Catalán de Ocón, the rug was made by Indian craftspeople using 100% recycled PET yarn.
The rug was inspired by a meeting between Álvaro Catalán de Ocón and Mapi Millet, GAN's creative director. The Spanish brand GAN mainly works with Indian artisans producing some of its collections by Patricia Urquiola and Charlotte Lancelot for example using recycled materials.
"Plastic Rivers" is an addition to this recycled collection that will see its conclusion in 2022 and that is going to feature tapestry-like rugs of some of the world's most plastic-polluted rivers, among them the Yangtze, the Indus, the Niger and the Ganges.
After sharing their thoughts and concerns about pollution, sustainable processes and the response that design could offer to climate change with better alternative processes and solutions, Álvaro Catalán de Ocón and Mapi Millet tried to find ways to highlight the damages caused by the plastic waste that ends up polluting our rivers and oceans and transform something highly polluting into a decorative artisanal piece.
Many rivers around the world and the Ganges in particular, the source of India's spiritual life, are turning into rivers of plastic: the Ganges is sadly one of the rivers that carries the most plastic waste.
But Álvaro Catalán de Ocón and Mapi Millet decided to turn it back into a river of beauty by paying it homage with a handmade rug made from 100% recycled PET yarn and using the hand-tufted technique.
The yarn to make this rug is obtained from plastic waste using a high quality recycling process: the touch similar to wool, but the the level of resistance and durability is higher.
This dichotomy between soft and hard is reflected in the message carried by the rug with the Ganges as a source of life turned into a carrier of plastic by pollution, and in another deeper dichotomy, the gap between rich and poor countries and the commercialization of waste, often exported to Asian countries.
The rug is not an interpretation, but rather a faithful scale reproduction of an aerial view of the river it represents with spectacular basins, mountain ranges, plains and estuaries in greens, earth tones and blues, and it carries a powerful message.
The Ganges rug won the Urban Public Furniture Design category at the Ro Plastic Prize 2021, organised by Rossana Orlandi, and awarded in September at the Leonardo da Vinci Science and Technology Museum inMilan, where the piece was also on display as part of the "Hall of Waste" exhibition.
While this rug was hand-tufted, the artisans working for GAN employ a variety of other techniques, including embroidery, knitting, knotting and weaving.
If you prefer fashion to interior design and in particular sustainable designs, but you love the rug palette and the three-dimensional tufted effects created by the technique employed in this piece, check out Tessa Perlow's shirts with appliqued multi-layered swirling river-like flows made with strips of repurposed T-shirts.
