Knothouse

For Bettina Gedda, founder of the Copenhagen design studio Knothouse, meticulous craftsmanship is important. No less important, she says, is the moral framework underpinning the business of making and selling hand crafted carpets. Bettina has always been committed to only work with manufacturers with whom Knothouse has a personal relationship, can trust and with whom they share values. She says joining GoodWeave® was the next logical step to, as she puts it, “put a label on so the good deed is visible to clients as well.”

Bettina, who has an MFA from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, based her company in Copenhagen, a city that is now considered an international mecca for design aficionados. And the hub of that city’s vibrant design world is of late, Frederiksgade 1, an ornate turn-of-the-last century building and home to Knothouse as well as the studios of a number of other influential members of Copenhagen’s design community.

It is there, among a warren of other leading edge design studios and showrooms that Knothouse creates its already legendary, carefully customized Tibetan wool and Chinese silk pieces. Gedda’s clients are a cohort of discerning people who, she explains, “look for items that may be passed on through generations, with interesting stories to tell, rather than just buying what is in fashion at the moment.” Some of the many lauded rugs in the Knothouse collection are the Tibetan wool Atelier Light and the Chinese silk Borderline which is a client and a personal favorite.

For Bettina there is almost a poetry about the process of creating handcrafted rugs.  The traditional techniques that go back centuries, the stories the rugs tell and the interplay of design, pattern, color, material, texture and craftsmanship all, she says, play significant roles in the ultimate product’s beauty. “Knothouse even “embraces the flaws and irregularities of the process by looking at the medium in a non conventional way.”

Although she feels there is still a lot of work to do to educate the rug buying populace about ethical labor practices, she is grateful that most of her clients already share the values to which Knothouse is committed and which are buttressed with the support of GoodWeave. “We would say GoodWeave is the only morally defending way to produce anything.”

For more information go to: www.knothouse.com