“I’m incredibly proud of this collection for more than just the design. I wanted a product that we could be proud of from every aspect, and this rug collection does that. They are the first of their kind available to industry professionals and home owners alike.”

Meredith Heron

 

Meredith Heron Collection Manifesto

  1. Collaboration Unites Us

We believe that collaboration unites and strengthens the creative process and the industry. We surround ourselves with expert craftspeople that want to elevate their own craft. This collaboration allows our collective genius to skyrocket. Together, we came up with solutions to express the different elements that make this collection truly unique.

  1. Thoughtful Design

We intentionally create designs that withstand trends and can be appreciated for years. We are inspired by traditional motifs & craftsmanship but seek to use these in a modern way.

Intentional design is core to the entire Meredith Heron Collection, and every design is original of Meredith Heron. The rugs are all a derivation of traditional rug designs and motifs synthesized with a modern sensibility. This rug collection is a by-product of Meredith’s extensive travels. They are infused with her wonderful sense of design and colour.

  1. Produce Responsibly

We care about how it is made just as much as we do about design. So much so that we own the looms, the yarns, the maps, and the colour formulas - and we made these investments because we want to offer you a sustainable product that can get into your hands in a timely way. We also want an offering that appreciates thoughtful design & quality that withstands a lifetime of footsteps.

 

Weavers & Mills

Many of our mills are among where our expert weavers live. Many of our weavers are women, and having the mills nearby allows them to weave throughout the day.

 

Quality

Every rug within the Meredith Heron Collection is hand-made. Hand-made means made by hand and in our case hand-knotted. Hand-tufted and hand-loomed are not the same nor are they equivalent in quality. For us, it’s a weaver at a loom following a map to our precise specifications.

 

Materials

We select many of the finest materials so that you can love our rugs for many years. For example, we know with 100% certainty that Merino Wool from New Zealand is the best wool for our North American climate. It contains a higher Lanolin content which reduces breakage and repels liquids more easily. We also use a Bamboo derived viscose for a touch shine and details in a few of our rugs. Viscose is a standard mono filament that is derived from the cellulose of various materials. You may hear the terms; Art Silk, Bamboo Silk and Banana Silk - these are all similar materials. These materials are not impervious to water as wool is, since they do not have the oil coating and the natural stain resistance of sheep wool or the toughness of natural silk, made from silk-worms.

 

Spinning

There is also a difference between Mill Spun and Hand Spun. Mill Spun yarn is spun by machine. The yarn comes out perfectly even and the dye lot is uniform - Uniform colour, uniform finish.

Hand spinning produces a grainer finish, and the colour is uneven. Depending on the desired effect one is after, this method of spinning is an excellent way to play with the fibre. We have 100% Hand Spun or Mill Spun New Zealand Wool and 100% Bamboo derived Mill Spun Viscose through this collection.

 

Dyeing

The yarns in the Meredith Heron Rug Collection are dyed in advance which offers you a reduced production time for custom colorways or made to order special requests.

There are several different dye types used in rug making, the most common is chrome dye. Chrome dye is a man-made dye and is colourfast and lightfast. Natural dyes are produced from plants, minerals, and animal materials. These dyes are often more colourful than chrome dyes as they are made up of many different colours, with the most dominant colour being the one we see.

Abrash is a technique used to produce colour variation on the strands of material. This is achieved by the different ways of dyeing the materials. Some material is immersed in dyes, while others are dyed before spinning into yarn, which will produce an unevenness in the colour.

We use the best German chrome dyes for colourfast and ultraviolet resistance from fading. Even so, rugs may fade overtime if left in an area which is consistently exposed to sunlight.

Knots

Knots are what distinguish a handmade rug from a machine made rug. Machines cannot tie knots in the same manner that human hands can. The knots also give the legendary longevity and durability to handmade hand-knotted rugs.

Our rugs start with relatively common knot found in most of the traditional rug making areas of India, Pakistan, and Nepal. We use both a loop and cut knot Indo/Tibetan method, and a square Persian knot for our rugs.

An Indo/Tibetan knot method is where the wool strand is tied around a rod placed in front or through the warp of the rug, and then the knot is tied around the rod and through the warp and around the weft (if there is one).

We also use a less common square knot in some of our rugs called, Persian knot (so called due to its provenance from Persia, ancient Iran). This knot is relatively uncommon given most of the weavers are elderly, and there aren’t many weaves learning this type of traditional knot. There is also reduced demand given the relative expense and labour intensiveness for the Persian Knot.

The Persian Knot is tied in a figure 8 square around the warp of the rug and then cut once it is tied. There is no rod used for this type of not making it an extremely durable way to construct rugs. The counts of knots along with the thickness of the yarn determine the density of the weaves and the durability of the rugs.

Weaves

When you see the term 'weave', think of it as density and think of knots as a style of weave. In short, knots and weaves are different.

5/32, 9/25, 10/34 are weaves for our loop & cut pile rugs throughout this collection.

Finishing

There are a variety of finishing techniques for rugs; clipping, embossing, carving, scraping are four of the most common.

Construction Of Our Designer Rugs | Meredith Heron Collection