MY STORY AND HOW I BECAME PASSIONATED ABOUT RUGS
It all started 40 years ago in Sweden, as a child I remember coming to my fathers work, jumping on the piles of rugs where my father was working, a company that was traveling around the world to source rugs. I remember my father coming home from the travels bringing stories and gifts and I knew I also had to go out in the world and explore culture and new lands. Little did I know what an inpact that would have on me and that I 40 years later had developed a love affair with the world of handmade rugs. Growing up I was drawn to the arts in all forms but also to estoric questions, nature medicine and performing arts. I had an urge to create and I was nearly obsessed with the question why we create . A subject I am still intriged by. I was so impressed and delighted when I could witness people who masterd their ways in creating, the sublime gifts that humans have to performe a skill and use this skill in a way to express themselves.
When I was ten years old I decided to become a dancer, that took me to a dance school in Copenhagen when I was fifteen and when I was seventeen I moved to The Netherlands to study at Codarts university in Rotterdam to become a proffessional dancer. After finishing the dance academy in The Netherlands I went to India to study further in dance but also yoga and ayurveda. India brought me to China and I would stay in China 12 years and travel in all Asia. I loved travelling, the excitment in ones spine entering a new area, meeting the people and the pulse of the land, the different language, scenery of nature, foods, architecture and customs. I stayed abroad for more then 20 years and even if I really conciderd China as my home I could have a feeling of missing my family in Sweden. Always when I was in a market weather it was in India or in Kirgistan and I saw rugs I would strangly enough feel home. Rugs grew to became a symbol for uniting home and family. This connection was so clear to me but also a bit mysterious. The mystic of traditional made rugs and carpets was something I wanted to study more, I wanted to embrace it fully.
The more one see and feel the more one learn and the more you dive into the world of rugs the more you know that there is so much yet to discouver, its endless and its in a constant movement of trying out new shapes, way to bring forward colour and materials . Its an open landscape that is made for experiment.
When someone is mastering the craftmanship of rug artisrty the rug speaks for itself, especially if it has outstanding quality. How the rug is created is essential for me and with this I mean the whole process, from idea to making the design, to decide where to make it and by who, the material used, the colours, the way of making it and most of all the purpous of why we are creating it. If a rug is well made you can get stunned by the power a rug can shine out.
Hearthproject is about meetings between people. It’s my admiration to the human skill of pure delicate craftsmanship in the making of rugs and carpets. It’s my appreciation to the gifts of expression of life in art and movement.
Shirin as a 3 years old in her parents store in the 1980’s
is the ground where the fire is rising from. For ex the stone where the wood or coal is giving life to the fire. Decades ago it was around the fire place a family would unite sharing prayers, wishes and dreams. The word has a strength in it’s meaning and symbolism. The base of fire drives us in lust and creativity, without it we would be numb. Its essential for our living and has brought cultures together through our history. There is even an exprssion named Cultural Hearth, it is places or hubs where a culture, language, urbanization, art has originated and flourished from. It does not remain on the place itself but spreades around becuse of its influence and can be adopted and practiced by many.. …For me one of the essentials of life is about being in a meeting, a meeting in creation of the sublime art of life. Through the history humans have been traveling and meeting around the fire for ex along the silk road, exchanging ideas and thoughts, a whispering lust for innovation. Today we might do that through social media but romantic as I am I like to keep the hearth burning.