Nordic Knots’ founders say ‘the centre of every beautiful Swedish home is a good rug,’ and who would disagree with expanding that notion to say a beautiful rug should be the centre of every room in homes across the world? The Zero Collection is sublime in its simplicity. Its five rugs represent the type of enduring ‘design’ we need for the times we live in.
Liza Laserow, Fabian Berglund and Felix Berglund founded Nordic Knots in 2016. They ‘thought long and hard’ about a rug collection concept that speaks to our time. They explored patterns and colours but decided 2020 needs freedom and confidence. Freedom to bypass pattern and colour and the confidence to allow natural fibre ‘to speak for itself’. The flatweave Zero Collection celebrates these ideas in pattern-free rugs expressed in pure, natural, undyed wools.
The ‘free from’ concept behind the Zero Collection reflects multiple shifts in consumer desires if not demands. Nordic Knots’ focus on no dyes, no pattern is the rug world equivalent of the 2020 shift to ‘natural beauty’. Refinery29 reported in ‘Goodbye “Instagram Face”—Natural Beauty Is Back’, that the pandemic has created a ‘desperate’ craving for wellness, self-care and ‘something, anything that’s easy and makes us feel good’. For many, that ‘something’ is ‘a natural, pared-down approach to beauty’. In the rug world this ‘skin-centric’ shift translates into the wellness and feel good factors of weaving with unadulterated, undyed, natural fibres (see COVER two-part series ‘Naked nature’) .
Rugs in the Zero Collection are available in five natural wool shades ranging from dark Anthracite to a Cream mix. Handwoven in India and GoodWeave® certified, the Zero Collection is ‘small batch’ production, meaning rug stock is kept intentionally low. This approach links to ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing and its focus on the alignment of raw materials to production in order to reduce, if not eliminate, waste and minimise inventory. When rugs are not in stock, lead time for a rug from the Zero Collection is approximately seven weeks, a ‘quick’ time frame in the rug world, but also one that encourages mindful waiting rather than mindless consumption.
