kasthall launches colorful striped rug collection in collaboration with sight unseen

during this year’s stockholm design week, kasthall and sight unseen have joined forces to launch their new ambitious collaboration of two expressive rug designs. the new york-based creative design duo has utilized the swedish rug & textile company’s designer tool to create the two designs, resulting in one circular hand-tufted carpet in pink and green, and a rectangular hand-woven one in pink and yellow.

all images courtesy of kasthall

kasthall has developed the rug designer tool to facilitate custom products for architects and interior designers, offering two different styles of rugs, one hand-tufted and one hand-woven available in 116 colors either in solid color blocks or with geometric patterns. the company’s collaboration with sight unseen illustrates the vast possibilities of the tool and how it can help stylists and interior designers by creating two expressive rugs using only the online tool.

‘I think the tool is all about experimentation,’ says monica khemsurov, co-founder of sight unseen, ‘you really have to get in there and start working with it to understand its capabilities and figure out which direction you want to go in. we didn’t have a specific point of reference going into the design phase, but we realized as we were playing around with the tool that we were subconsciously inspired by the trompe l’oeil geometric patterns you often see on building facades in milan.’

the striped rugs also draw from the clean lines of scandinavian design language, using he energetic color palette that sight unseen is often associated with. the same one hundred percent wool yarn quality from new zealand is used for the hand-tufted rug mark as for the hand-woven rugs häggå and arkad, making it easy to match different rugs in larger projects. what’s more, mark can be hand-tufted in any size or shape, making it highly versatile.

‘sight unseen is all about how to use color in a chic but un-boring way — we like to create exciting, unique color combinations, often using tonal variations or strong contrasts,’ notes jill singer, co-founder of sight unseen. ‘in the woven rug for example we see combinations of blush pink, dusky rose and mustard yellow paired with a much deeper ochre tone.’

‘we wanted to mix up the stripes a little so they didn’t feel so traditional, hence turning them in two different directions in the hand-tufted version. but at the same time, we didn’t get too playful, as we prefer design that’s more sophisticated,’ monica explains. ‘the tool made it easy for us to experiment and try out our ideas without having a blank slate in front of us. we wanted to see if we could manage to create something that we would actually want to live with. i think in the end we succeeded in that regard.’

project info:

designer: kasthall, sight unseen