Imbued in every inch of A Rum Fellow’s range of fabrics and rugs is what co-founder Dylan O’Shea describes as the ‘feel-good factor’. And it goes far beyond the brand’s signature vibrant colours and vivid patterns.
It’s a feeling that’s as much about the company’s win-win relationship with the indigenous Guatemalan family-run weaving workshops it collaborates with. ‘They get a sustainable livelihood in a good working environment, with training as well, while in return we get incredible textiles unlike anything else around,’ enthuses O’Shea.
It’s also a vibe you feel as you walk into A Rum Fellow’s brand-new showroom on west London’s Golborne Road. Marking the brand’s 10th anniversary, the space’s ground and basement floors are filled with the latest collections of fabrics, rugs, wall-hangings and brocades from O’Shea and his partner (in life and work), fashion designer Caroline Lindsell, alongside furniture with a Memphis feel by Creu and Create.
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It’s all combined in ways that are, says O’Shea,‘a little surprising, while warm and positive’. The modern ticking stripes of ‘Scoop’ and ‘Ripple’ (woven on a pedal loom) hang alongside ginghamy ‘Fable’ and the highly decorative ‘Holmul’.
Prominently displayed, the brand’s bold, bright rugs, flat-woven, hand-knotted and tufted in India and Nepal, include new designs such as ‘Ocular’, ‘Periscope’ and ‘Kiln’, all fusing tribal graphics with motifs borrowed from 1950s Californian modernism.
The brand’s name encapsulates this melding of influences. ‘We liked the old English use of the word “rum”, denoting something odd, peculiar or strange, because we tend towards thinking and working in old ways of crafting but with a contemporary approach to colour and pattern,’ says O’Shea.
Inspired by the vintage fabrics the couple collected on their travels through Bolivia and Peru when they met in their thirties, they shared a belief that, explains O’ Shea,‘beautiful design can be a force for positive, fair-trade change’. It has led them to produce their unique textiles with Mayan craftspeople, many of them working in female co-operatives, all over Guatemala.
Recent collaborations have included runners with Roger Oates, a printed collection with George Spencer and, in the pipeline, ‘something exciting’ with Schumacher. But it has been by no means a ‘get rich quick’ approach to making fabric or rugs, O’Shea laughs.
‘It has taken a lot of effort, work and time to make it happen, but with that has come an enormous sense of achievement and meaning. Touch the fabrics and you can feel all the craftsmanship, and all the conversations and travel both we and our artisans have put into it.’ arumfellow.com
