HERKNER TAKES HIS TIME TO GET DESIGN JUST RIGHT
In a world where we’re increasingly accustomed to same-day deliveries for home furnishings, there are designers like Germany ’s Sebastian Herkner who believe in going the other way. Now, more than ever, Herkner says he believes in the importance of practicing patience when it comes to decorating our homes and investing in quality products.
“I think this is a teaching moment for designers and for the press,” he says. “To teach people how to consume products, because, for example, every year or two we want to have a new smartphone. The old one is still working, but we want a new one. Sometimes we buy a lot of things quite cheap, because it’s cheap for a season, and then get rid of them and buy something new, which is trendy. I think we have to change this behaviour.”
Herkner adhered to a slow-design philosophy in producing his latest rug collection, created in collaboration with The Rug Company, the 20-year-old London-based company known for its designer collaborations and hand-knotted, fair-trade rugs made in Nepal.
“About two and a half years ago, I went to London to visit them at their studio in Notting Hill and we started to work on this collection,” he says. “We used different kinds of fibres, different lengths of fibres, and different knotting techniques. The idea being, if you have the rug at home, you normally have no shoes on — maybe socks or barefoot — so you walk around and really feel the surface of the material.”
It takes a long time to design and make a good quality rug, Herkner says.
“It’s a long process in selecting the right colours,” he says. “You have hundreds of colours to choose from and it’s a long process to find the right balance. When combining colours, it’s not like with a wooden chair, where you have two wooden elements and you glue them together or screw them together; with colours you really have to develop them and rethink them.”
Having the rug hand-knotted also takes months, Herkner says.
“You can’t 3D print a rug,” he says. “Nowadays, as a designer, you can print a lot with 3D, prototypes of lampshades or chairs, for example, but with a rug you really have to do it by hand. Knotting it by hand, if you get a custom one made to measure, it takes three or four months, depending on the size.”
Herkner’s rug collection includes two designs, Mainland Light and Mainland Dark, both inspired by cityscapes.
“I’m really inspired by materials and colour,” he says, “but in this case, it was also the idea of layering, like in the city. How it’s always changing, reflections and facades.”
Colour is something Herkner says he thinks about quite a lot, and feels it’s really important to use colour in home decor to show personality and character.
“I think we have a lot of colours in our lives, but sometimes in our interiors we’re a little bit shy,” he says.
When people think of classic furniture, Herkner says, they often default to grey, black or beige, but he says a classic piece can also come in red, green or yellow.
“A colour can also be classic,” he says. “It’s not just white or black. For women, the red dress is also something classic, it’s not just a black dress, and I think it could be the same in interiors.”
The way we embrace colour in our homes can also reflect what the “light situation” where we live is like, he says.
“The light in South Europe is different from the light in Canada or Japan,” he says. “I think the light and the sun, and all this, is very important in terms of how it interacts with the colour of our interiors.”