The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
House style
Eyes on the tiger
THE TIBETAN-STYLE TIGER rug is currently very much in vogue, thanks to the trend for animal print and all things maximalist, but its roots are in far more serene practices. In the 19th century, the rugs were given as gifts to Buddhists lamas, as the tiger-skin pattern was thought to protect them while they were meditating.
Sadly, no such talismanic power applied to the animals that inspired the rugs, and since the turn of the 20th century, numbers of tigers in the wild have dropped from an estimated 100,000 to fewer than 4,000, due to poaching and habitat loss. This has inspired the World Wildlife Fund’s TX2 initiative to double tiger numbers by 2022 (the next Chinese year of the tiger), and part of its fundraising drive is Tomorrow’s Tigers, a collection of limited-edition art rugs, going on display at Sotheby’s this week.
The WWF has partnered with rug company Christopher Farr on the collection, which includes 11 modern interpretations of the Tibetan originals, designed by artists such as Anish Kapoor and Gary Hume. The resulting designs take on an intriguing variety of styles; each comes in an edition of 10, handmade in the hills of northern India using specialist hand-dyeing, weaving and knotting techniques.
Hume has created a characterful, vibrant design in turquoise, blue and green, while Kapoor’s is an abstracted tiger-stripe motif in dark tones. American artist Maya Lin’s is a simple yet striking pattern of paw prints across an ochre background, while British writer and artist Harland Miller, known for his paintings based on Pen- guin book covers, has produced a bold, typographical piece.
Prices start from £10,000 – these are rugs that are destined for the wall, rather than the floor – and the whole collection will be on view at Sotheby’s in New Bond Street, London W1, from Tuesday to 4 February, alongside a group of nine rare antique examples. wwf.org.uk/tomorrowstigers