Danskina launched three new rugs in 2015, two by Jongerius – the company’s design director – and a third by recent Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Daniel Costa.

Jongerius’ first new design is a hand-knotted rug called Argali, which features a braided fringe and silk embroidery. The rug gets its name from the rugged breed of Himalayan sheep, which provided the wool used to make it.

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“It is made from the wool of a sheep high up in the mountains,” Jongerius says. “This wool is so sturdy. You can use it in the contract market. It will last forever and it stays beautiful.”

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Jongerius also designed a new tufted rug called Dew, which features an uneven surface of hand-cut piles.

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“Normally when you do tufting you shave it and it has one surface,” Jongerius explains. “But this is cut by hand so you have irregularity. It gives it a very nice shadow play.”

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The third product in the new collection is a rug called Fringe by young designer Daniel Costa, whose work Jongerius spotted in 2013 at the Design Academy Eindhoven graduate show.

“It’s made out of New Zealand wool, with very bulky fringes,” Jongerius says. “It is very generous. We are really celebrating sheep like this.”

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Berlin-based Jongerius is widely recognised as one of the world’s most influential female designers. This year she launched a manifesto calling for an end to “pointless products, commercial hypes and empty rhetoric” in design with theorist Louise Schouwenberg.

 

In 2013 she worked with architect Rem Koolhaas to renovate the North Delegates’ Lounge at the United Nations buildings in New York.

When designing textiles, Jongerius says she always starts with the yarn.

“In general as a designer I always start with the yarn and that’s also what I do with Danskina,” she explains. “We start by spinning yarns, trying to blend them in a special way with other yarns. Then we start to design the rug.”