House style

Elevating rugs to an art form

Atelier Fevrier’s rugs are exquisite in form and pattern. very few are rectangular or circular (why shouldn’t a carpet have a jagged edge?), and they look good enough to hang on a wall.

this fresh take on rug design is the work of toulouse-based former fashion designer F lori an Pretet and his wife, lisa. the couple met in Kathmandu in February 2010 (hence the name Atelier Février), where lisa worked in marketing for a fashion e-tailer. After graduating from design school, Florian was with the French luxury house Hermès for three years, regularly travelling to its cashmere-production facility in Nepal.

‘it inspired me to want to design something closely related to fashion, but not necessarily clothes,’ he says. ‘i wanted to create something that would reflect my drawings just a si drew them on paper. rugs seemed the answer, especially given the expertise in Nepal.’ Atelier Février launched in 2015 (after ‘the courtship, then the marriage, then two babies’) and the resulting rugs fuse modern art with traditional design. F lorian’ se lab or ate pencil sketches are scaled up, then hand-knot ted by a family firm in the Himalayas using the finest tibetan wool and Chinese silk.

‘it takes a team of 50 people several months to produce each rug,’ says lisa. ‘the dyes are made using plants native to the Kathmandu valley, so the whole process is eco-friendly.’

Very few are rectangular or circular – why shouldn’t a rug have a jagged edge? the atel ier ’s s e c ond c ol le c t ion, Hélios, was inspired by astronomy and celestial maps from the 15th century. A design called surya (‘sun’ in sanskrit) feat ures g...