How children’s drawings inspired the design for hand-tufted rugs

A rug designed by Neel
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Monsters, creepy crawlies, squiggly curves and human forms make up the new collection of hand-tufted rugs at Neytt, a luxury home furnishings brand based in Cherthala. The range of rugs for children, in bright colours, were designed by Neel and Uday, the children of designer and visual artist Vanessa Meister.

Rugs for children by children

The spark of the idea came from a casual conversation Vanessa had with the Neytt team. “Why not do something for children by children? When adults design for children, they may tend to go for the usual tropes, superheroes et al, when children draw, they have no commercial agenda or the compulsive need to be perfect,” says the Swiss designer who works as a creative consultant in Kochi. 

The dragon her elder son Neel drew, for instance, was thin and long and not so proportionate. But Vanessa left it as is, with very little interference. 

She approached the process systematically, giving nine-year-old Neel, and seven-year-old Uday, sketch books and asking them to do sketches from their imagination. “I told them to think of the characters they would want to talk about; not images they have seen on TV,” she says. 

She sorted through dozens of drawings the children had made, picked the best ones, scaled them up and adjusted some colours before presenting it to Neytt. “We wanted the rugs to look as close to the original drawings as possible — we didn’t want to fine tune them or make them look cuter,” says Vanessa. 

When the children saw the final samples, they were delighted to say the least. “It was an opportunity for them to see the journey of an idea to its completion — how it takes form in the mind, develops on paper and makes it to a physical object they can touch and feel,” she says. And the sketches that emerged were brimming with childlike innocence, a sense of curiosity and with a dash of the fantastical.

While Neel’s book was mostly filled with dragons and snakes, Uday drew monsters. And most of these monsters had elaborate backstories too, says Vanessa. “He’d tell me in detail about each of his monster — Dancy, a monster who likes dancing, Joker Anniyan, “who is like a joker monster, but can live in space for 22 years without a helmet” or the Gecko Blueberry, who is a “nice one, who can go to places where there are snakes and not get dead [stet]”.

Vanessa hopes to organise a little presentation in schools about the process, so that children may feel inspired to work with their creativity. “Especially in this age of AI, it is important to understand and bring out our own unique method of self-expression,” she says.

Premium range

The premium range of rugs, titled Creatures, has five designs in hand-tufted wool. Snake and Fly, Monster Madness, Snakes, Fire-Breathing Frilled Lizard and Dragon. The round rugs are 6 feet in diameter and the rectangular ones are 5-ft by 8-ft. These statement pieces can be wall mounted, too. 

The collection was launched at the ID Design fair in Delhi in February. The rugs would also be showcased at the Little Big Festival for children in Kochi in April.

Available on www.neytt.com