NODUS
Italy

NODUS is a craft workshop and a cultural plan which started in 2009: in two years, two revolutionary collections, that reshaped the boundaries and the contours of rugs. Art, at the same time, an object and a room that accompany men since antiquity. Like an ideal and post-modern weft with its warp, Il Piccolo weaves the best and most ancient handicraft knowledge with the dreams and the visions of Designers and Artists. The first was a breaking collection: sixty rugs that unhinged boundaries, messed up patterns which had been transmitted in centuries, broke symmetries and upset traditional chromatic ranges. The rug becomes a contemporary piece of art on which to walk, which sets spaces and reinvents lifestyles.

The 2010 collection, with 5 authors and nine rugs, is more focused but widens the styles, techniques and Countries spectrum. The rug finds its complements, cushions and rag dolls, for a new conviviality, pointing to the essential because its origins are firmly rooted in an ancient past. Once the boundaries are broken, everything has citizenship in the world of NODUS: besides wool and silk, also poorer and more traditional materials, like hollow linen, banana silk fibre and hemp. Also new themes burst in: the ordinariness of a notebook or a tablecloth in the first collection, eroticism and passion, the distilled words of a Poet in the second. It's not chaos but the sign of a new global order, welcoming and inclusive. The rug also becomes an enchanting and playing object, but a unique object, created with ancient knowledge, knot by knot, with times ranging from three to six months, keeping refined techniques alive, like the silken Iranian Sumak, the woolen Crewel embroideries, the Indian chain-stitch and the original Turkish Kilim.
In Turkey,

Turkmenistan, Iran, Nepal, India, Pakistan and China, Il Piccolo visited and chose the manufacturing workshops one by one, verifying materials, techniques, craftsmanship and the ethicality of the production.

In fact, every NODUS rug is manufactured with the highest respect for human rights, first of all the right to have appropriate work conditions and a fair remuneration. The guarantee is issued by Rug Mark, the international Foundation which, for more than 15 years, has been fighting against child labour in the rug production and strictly inspects the manufacturing companies every three months.
NODUS relies on exclusivity but also on spreading through editorial projects, approachable by everyone. The exhibition in the showroom of Il Piccolo and the website www.nodusrug.it, where rugs can be customized and bought. Pictures, videos, stories, the voices and faces of the Artisans and the colours of the dyes complete this particular web-museum.