Products fair: Lithuanian design brand EMKO has worked with a local textile factory to repurpose its rainbow array of leftover yarns into a spotted rug, which aims to "bring some chaos into sterile modern interiors".
Set against a plain brown or blue base, the linen offcuts are used to form blobs of different colours and pile heights, with some merging into the backdrop while others playfully protrude.
The rug features multicoloured linen offcuts embedded into a caramel brown base
Called Chaos, the rug is hand-tufted in the same family-run textile factory, in the town of Panev??ys, where the offcuts are generated in the first place.
"During a visit to the factory, the owner told me that they've stored some offcuts that aren't fit for mass production for years without a plan for how to use them," EMKO's creative director Audrone Drungilaite told Dezeen. "Recycling them into a new yarn is quite expensive and, unlike wool, small pieces of linen tend not to spin into a high-quality new yarn."
The colourful blobs have different pile weights to add texture to the rug
So instead, Drungilaite developed a way to turn the practical limitations of the offcuts, which are available in small quantities of many different colours rather than a large amount of any one colour, into a playful visual language.
This highlights rather than downplays the fact that the rug is made using post-industrial waste materials and aims to start conversations about the need for...