Fran Carpet — Large
Valerie Objects
by TheAlfredCollection
This piece is part of the AAVVGG Archive and not currently part of the collection.
This is not ‘fast design’ that expires after a year but a reverence of the archetype of a carpet, pure in form and function. TheAlfredCollection have created a series of handwoven minimalist carpets for those who seek design with an added artistic value and a supreme sense of sustainability.
Marie and Cathérine’s zero-compromise mentality enunciates in the choice of materials. All carpets are crafted with a mixture of two top-shelf wools from New Zealand and Portugal. “The New Zealand wool offers the right softness while the Portuguese adds strength”, Marie says. To maximize durability, all carpets are woven by hand at an expert textile company in Portugal with whom the designers built a great relationship since 2010. “This company is a unicum”, Marie says. “Handweaving a carpet is very labor-intensive and takes about a week and a half. But the result resonates a beauty that is simply impossible to achieve with a machine”.
TheAlfredCollection doesn’t gush about the arts & crafts aesthetics in which the human error plays an important role. The manual labor is merely tangible in the finesse of the finishing. In fact, Marie and Cathérine mainly keep the designs as minimalist as possible to fully express the texture of the wool. They envision ‘timeless’ and not ‘trendy’ designs. “It is our intention that the carpets last twenty years”, Cathérine explains. “That’s why we avoid hyped colours”.
For Valerie Objects this creative duo designed four series of carpets named Ivy, Fran, Lucy and Frenzy, — all names referring to Hitchcock characters. The four carpets come in three sizes and excel in durability and sobriety.
- TheAlfredCollection, Belgium (2016)
- Handwoven in Portugal
- Ocher, Natural, Ink Blue, Silver, Anthracite
- 100% Wool (A mixture of Merino from New Zealand and Beira Alta from Portugal)
- Length 340cm / 139"
- Width 240cm / 94.5"