takashi murakami designs rugs for louis vuitton

takashi murakami designs rugs for louis vuitton ‘pink time’

two hand-embroidered tapestries by takashi murakami, created in collaboration with louis vuitton, will be exhibited in the louis vuitton champs-elysées maison in paris in january 2010: a round carpet titled ‘flowerball’ and a square carpet titled ‘pink time’. designboom presents behind-the-scenes info.

‘flowerball’

takashi murakami at the exhibition at the guggenheim museum bilbao photo © gion

the making

these rugs are hand woven at an indian rug factory with a long and distinguished history. actual sized printouts of the rug data were made on semi-transparent film and brought to india by the kaikai kiki design team to the e. hill and company, chosen by louis vuitton for production. here the printouts were laid on top of the rugs, while the team checks for deviations from the original design.

kaikai kiki co. was founded by takashi murakami in 2001, and evolved from its predecessor, the hiropon factory, which was founded in 1996. its goals as an enterprise include the production and promotion of artwork, the management and support of select young artists, general management of events and projects, and the production and promotion of merchandise.

epitomizing skilled craftsmanship, the tapestries have been woven from the finest quality new zealand wool using the lock stitching method, which employs about 20 knots per square centimeter. these tapestries, numbered and signed by the artist himself, are produced in two sizes (2m and 3m diameter for ‘flowerball’ and 2x2m or 3x3m for ‘pink time’), in a limited edition of 20 each. at least 4 months are required to produce one of these these collector art pieces.

the tapestries have been shown this year in the guggenheim museum in bilbao (as part of murakami’s retrospective exhibition), the louis vuitton omotesando store in tokyo, at design miami, held in basel, switzerland in june of 2009 in the show of galerie emmanuel perrotin and in the hong kong museum of art (as part of the ‘louis vuitton: the passion of creation’ exhibition).

the artworkof takashi murakami is colorful and attractive, and accessible in their reference to lovable cartoon characters. murakami ‘shocked’ the world with his entrepreneurial collaboration with louis vuitton, when he challenged the boundaries between art and commerce.