Margo Selby
Diva Weaver
If you are going to work with an icon, choose one you can identify with. Here at Alternative Flooring, where we love all things angular, geometric, striped and diamond-shaped, we've found the perfect partner in Margo Selby.
A rising star in the world of interior design, Margo took her degree at Chelsea College of Art and Design, following up for good measure with a postgraduate degree at The Royal College of Art (RCA). Bowled over by demand for her fabrics following an RCA degree show, Margo started talking to mills about production. She spent the next 18 months at The Ann Sutton Foundation, a pioneering research centre for woven textiles.
"I like to explore technical constructions on my hand loom and combine fibres and structure to innovate new fabrics and patterns."
During this time, Margo worked mostly on developing handwoven fabrics for industrial production. She began combining her handwoven ideas with industrial processes. The result was the silk and lycra fabrics that became the trademark of her brand, officially launched in 2003.
The rest, as they say...
Margo first collaborated with Alternative Flooring in 2015, creating two distinctive designs, Fair Isle and Shuttle, which were the foundation of the award winning Quirky patterned carpets. Margo's designs were inspired by a collection of deflected double weave hand-woven cloths that she had been developing on her hand loom in her studio. Making on a hand loom was an integral part of the design process for her first carpet collection. The designs were originally produced as soft silk and wool fabrics but were then blown up and re-coloured to make them suitable for flooring.
Like many of Margo Selby's designs, the patterns were inspired by the process of weaving and the uniformed geometric shapes reflect the structured nature of the craft. Quirky Fair Isle takes inspiration from Margo's silk jacquard collection and is available as a 3.66m broadloom carpet or as a bespoke, made to measure rug or carpet runner. Quirky Shuttle is derived from Margo Selby's handwoven deflected double cloth weaves.
In 2017, Margo collaborated again with Alternative Flooring creating a stunning range of multi-colour striped carpets.
For the Margo Selby Stripes collection, Margo drew inspiration from her handwoven artworks and the pallettes which developed as a result of creating them. Margo worked on many yarn wrappings, which she usually uses as a starting point when designing a warp, these then became the designs for the carpets. At the time Margo explored all sorts of stripes, from traditional ticking to rhythmic multi stripes in order to get the final selection. The end result was three designs, a blocstripe. a pinstripe and a ticking stripe; in four colourways, Sun, Surf, Frolic and more recently Rock.
"I have always been inspired by stripes and like to incorporate them in my designs. For me stripes are intrinsically linked to weaving and the process of weaving, which is linear by nature. Plus I loved the freedom of the brief, I was specifically encouraged to bring my own colour combinations. "
In 2019, we were delighted to work with Margo yet again when she added to her sucessful Quirky patterned carpets with two stunning new geometric designs, Quirky Button and Quirky Ribbon.
In addition to this, Margo created a beautiful multi colour patchwork design which was transformed into the Quirky Patch runner, the perfect patterned narrow width stair carpet.
So, to summarise Margo in 3 words... playful, eclectic, crafted; and we just love her.
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