Of beautiful eyes and fair carpets
- icarpet Startseite
- icarpet Teppich
- icarpet Idee
Imagine…
Imagine a work of art that is as unique as you are. A hand-knotted carpet that is both an artifact and a piece of you. A portrait of your most complex biometric feature: your iris. An eye you can see and feel. For your wall or floor. That’s iCarpet. Have your own or your favorite person’s iris turned into a handmade, unique rug.
Fair eyes, fairly produced
Beauty is not just what you see. It is also an attitude. Our carpets are handmade in Nepal, in a family-owned manufacture that has been licensed under the GoodWeave certification program for good work standards and child-labor free production. GoodWeave randomly inspects looms to make sure that no children are working there. They also help children return to their families, and parents, to send their children to school. We recently met the wonderful owners and workers of “our” loom when we traveled to Nepal.
Bild – Inhaberin mit Jeannine
The artist’s eye
My name is Jeannine van Erk. I trained as a carpenter before studying interior design at Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. As an artisan I love well-crafted objects and materials, fabrics, and colors that appeal to the eye as well as our sense of touch – a multi-sensory experience. I also love carpets and rugs and the effect they have on a space. To me, iCarpet is an expression of pure human beauty that transcends all barriers of gender, age, height, weight, race, ethnicity, or social status. The iris doesn’t tell you any of these things about a person. Maybe that is why they say that the eye is the mirror of our soul.
Bild – Bildschirmaufnahme
Bild – A4 Material Estate
Bild – Farbpalette 2
From iris to carpet
Every iCarpet is utterly unique. That’s not just because it is handmade. Each one is made in the image of a real-life iris. The template for your iCarpet is based on a high-resolution image of your eye. Dutch photographer Raymond van Zessen captures your iris with a macro lens. Working with a special image editor, Jeannine creates a template that retains the power of the original image while consolidating the sheer infinite number of colors to a manageable palette. Plotted in the original format of your carpet, this image serves as a pattern for the loom workers.