GUR - MorningCalM February 2019

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GUR creates handwoven rugs using traditional Portuguese methods, though its designs are anything but traditional. By collaborating with contemporary artists, GUR bridges different art styles, cultures and ways of seeing the world.

Célia Esteves is a translator — in her line of work, you have to be good at keeping track of the threads of a conversation. Her source material hails from disparate backgrounds and languages, which her business partner, weaver Cláudia Vilas Boas, helps decipher into Portuguese traditions. Together they make up GUR, a company in Porto that has created rugs based on the works of contemporary artists since 2013.

GUR rugs begin with a series of conversations. First, Esteves talks with the artists. It could take as little as a week to nail down the rug version of the artist’s work, or it could take three months. “We try to translate as best as we can — the design — but sometimes it doesn’t work on the first time, so we have to adapt,” says Esteves.

She likens it to pixels — weavers follow a blueprint that’s broken down square by square, knot by knot; abstract designs often look better and are more feasible to produce than realistic artwork. After the design is settled, Esteves talks with Vilas Boas to see what would work best, and they produce a sample to share with the artist. Then they discuss it some more. If everything looks good, the rug goes into full production, woven with leftover cotton from textile factories around Portugal.

Esteves was born and raised in a city that gazes out to the sea, beyond the western edge of Europe. Viana do Castelo brims with ancient heritage, and the traditional handicrafts industry still thrives there. Esteves can remember seeing rugs in her home all throughout her childhood. “I remember in the summer, my grandma used to ask me and my sister to wash them on the terrace with a brush and water,” she says.

She moved to Porto to study graphic design. When she started working in a printmaking studio, she had her first experience of working with other artists — and something clicked. “That was the natural inspiration for GUR,” she says. The first rug she ever created was for an exhibition, which is how she met Vilas Boas. A rug of Esteves’ own design, it features two white eyes arranged in a piercing stare, framed by black eyelids on a dark canvas. Eyes are her signature mark; she has an eye tattooed on each arm and uses one in GUR’s logo. “It’s a bridge between the project and me,” she says.

Esteves has looked far and wide to connect with artists from Hong Kong, Taipei, Mexico, Romania and Korea. She doesn’t design anymore — she thrives on connection, having begun GUR by collaborating with close friends and later reaching out to artists she admires. “Ian Stevenson was one of those,” she says. “When he said yes, I was really happy. I started to believe more in the project.”

Esteves works with artists who embrace abstract styles over realistic ones in part due to the practicalities of her medium. But it’s also because these artists, too, are preoccupied with how we look at things — how abstraction can highlight a new way of seeing. GUR has given nods to some of the biggest names in Western abstract art. Its KO series of rugs was inspired by Mark Rothko’s famous “multiforms,” hazy blocks of color usually painted on enormous canvases to surreal effect. Other rugs were inspired by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich’s work, which appears demurely simple today but is emblematic of his abstract Suprematist style that was so nonconformist as to be banned under Stalin’s regime.

GUR’s rugs celebrate the freedom inherent in experimentation. They bridge consumers and art, artists and artisans, and one culture to another. “I didn’t do it alone,” Esteves says emphatically. She was introduced to many of the artists she knows now with the help of fellow art lovers across the world, as well as design studios like Fabrica. 

“Two years ago, I went to China for a residency for one month. That was my first big international travel,” says Esteves. “Since then, I’ve been traveling much more.” She looks forward to exploring shores far away from Portugal.

And of course, GUR wouldn’t have been possible without Vilas Boas or the other weavers Esteves has worked with. “GUR wouldn’t exist if they weren’t so open-minded,” she says. “I really appreciate their work and respect their work, and they are not behind the scenes. They are a big part, or most of the part, of the project. People that work with artisans should value their work and their knowledge.”

This past September, GUR launched a new wool collection with designs by artists Nicolas Burrows and William Luz and produced by traditional wool rug company Tapetes Beiriz. GUR knows that no man is an island. It shows that everything we create is the picking up of an ongoing conversation. And sometimes, when we’re lucky, a new voice enriches the discussion.