MAR/APR 2019_ _ 067launched the rebranded Jan Kath company. The rest is history. “If you open
up a magazine today, it’s full of carpets. Please don’t get me wrong, but I think
that my team and me – we were part of that.”
Rugs, it turns out, still have a place in contemporary interiors – if they speak
the language of contemporary design. Customization factors heavily into
this. Jenni Finlay, Kath’s partner in the company’s showrooms in Toronto and
Vancouver, estimates that nearly 90 per cent of the rugs she sells are made to
order; because they’re handmade at every step, no extra effort goes into the
manufacture of a unique piece. Often, customization is simply a question of
size (after all, before a rug can be a good fit for a room, it first has to fit in the
room), but colours can also be matched to an existing palette and even the pile
height and level of sheen can be specified.
The massive rug destined for Cecconi Simone’s project in Toronto, for exam-
ple, is a combination of two stock Jan Kath patterns tweaked with a custom
colourway. “We realized that the size precluded us from going to a standard
product offering,” says Elaine Cecconi, who led the project. “We also knew that
the carpet is a focal point of the home: It had to be special and spectacular.
And now that it’s ensconced in the large family room, it looks so perfect that it
seems it was always there.”
Customization aside, a company’s collections must first speak to a con-
temporary audience – and Jan Kath’s offerings run the gamut. Some models
look almost like photographs, combining up to 50 colours of yarn – each
comprising three types of fibre – into panoramic images of twinkling galax-
ies, sunlit clouds or vast washes of pastel watercolour. Others depict more
prosaic iconography, like dilapidated signboards, neon lights or graffiti.
Still others – including the early and much-imitated Erased Classic line –
begin with a squarely traditional motif, then run it through with lines like
static on an old T.V., animate it with radiating vectors resembling rhumb lines
on an ancient map or obscure it with scribble-like swirls of shimmering silk.
The stories these rugs tell are wrapped up in the places Kath has been and
things he has seen: the brilliant floral patterns of the tapestries he encoun-
tered while riding the Trans-Siberian Express, the abstract motifs of boucher-
ouite rugs that villagers knot from recycled rags near his factory in Morocco,
a faded billboard that loomed over the road to his workshop north of Khon
Kaen, Thailand.
While Jan Kath’s catalogue may reflect its founder’s many passions, Kath is
the first to admit that it represents the combined effort of thousands of people.
And as the company grows to the point where no one man can oversee its many
interconnected parts, the next generation is already rising to take his place.
Kath’s oldest son, Sanchir, has started learning the trade from the ground up,
even spending a season in Kathmandu working as a weaver. “I didn’t force him
to do that,” Kath assures me. “It would be great if it carries on, but ...”
If the prospect of Jan Kath without Jan Kath seems unlikely, the com-
pany, it should be remembered, was built on a host of seamlessly woven
opposites: new and old, exotic and familiar, luxury and utility, tradition and
innovation. It may sound paradoxical, but the contemporary is, after all, just
a sliver of the continuum of history. “Tradition develops slowly,” Kath says.
“Maybe not visibly in a human’s lifetime, but it still continues. And what
I want to be ...” He pauses a moment, searching for the right words. “I want to
be the frontier of tradition.” jan-kath.deA carpet from Jan
Kath’s Erased Heritage
line (right) features
a traditional pattern
punctuated by a splash
of hot pink, while the
pastel-toned Milano
Radi Raved Deluxe rug
(far right) conjures an
Impressionist painting.
Whether it’s a stock
pattern enhanced with
new elements or a design
created from scratch, the
company’s customization
options range widely.