Hossein Rezvani’s first solo exhibition of carpets opens at Salsali Private Museum in Dubai

He designs about 20 to 25 pieces for his eponymous carpet brand every year and they are stocked in Iwan Maktabi, a high-end carpet store in The Dubai Mall.

Hossein Rezvani employs 500 weavers to make the carpets in Isfahan. Reem Mohammed / The National

As a designer with no professional training, Hossein Rezvani finds inspiration wherever he goes.

The German-Iranian carpet designer, whose latest design – the Electric Taupe – won the 2016 Carpet Design Award at Domotex, the world’s leading fair for floor coverings, says the pattern was inspired by a poster he spotted in Berlin.

“It was a techno-music poster, that I saw on a traffic light and I knew, as soon as I saw it, that I could work with it. I took the design of the poster for the middle piece and then gave it a border, like a traditional carpet, and played a bit more until I was satisfied. I don’t have a strict process that I can describe when I design; I just follow my feelings.”

Every year, Rezvani designs a collection of about 20 to 25 pieces for his eponymous carpet brand. They are stocked in Iwan Maktabi, a high-end carpet store in The Dubai Mall, and he exhibits them every year at the city’s Index International Design Exhibition.

But this week, he opened his first solo art exhibition at Salsali Private Museum in Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue. Electric Taupe is one of the designs on show, as is Frenchie, a piece designed to evoke French nostalgia with a faded vintage look, and Heriz Majorelle, a carpet from his 2017 collection.

Like many of his designs, Heriz Majorelle bears the hallmarks of an original Persian carpet pattern, but its vibrant colours of sapphire blue and sunshine yellow, make it refreshingly contemporary. The story behind this carpet is an interesting one.

“I was having a difficult year,” he says. “I was stuck for inspiration so I took some time out and went to Marrakech for a week. I visited the Majorelle Garden of Yves Saint Laurent and the colours amazed me. I knew I had to do a carpet of the blue and yellow of that house.”

It is anecdotes like these that show the truly creative side of Rezvani’s successful design business. Trained in economics, he was the only child of a carpet dealer, and when he was younger, travelled the world with his father to source material. But he was never interested in following the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who traded carpets in the bazaars of Tehran.

It wasn’t until 2007 that he had the idea to revolutionise the Persian carpet, without compromising on quality.

It took him two years to find the weavers to manufacture the designs he had in mind.

“Persuading the carpet makers to break with their tradition and make my carpets was the biggest challenge I faced,” he says.

“I had all these colourful and contemporary carpets, but I also wanted them to be classic. For that I needed quality and design.”

Now, each carpet is handmade in Isfahan, with up to one million knots per square metre. A six-square-metre carpet takes two weavers more than seven months to complete, with 2,000 man hours going into each one. Rezvani now employs more than 500 weavers to produce his carpets, and makes customised designs, but it can take four months to produce each one.

“Hossein’s carpets move the product to a higher level,” says Mohammed Maktabi, the chief executive of Iwan Maktabi store.

“It goes from being a decorative utilitarian item to a more artistic piece. We have been pushing in this direction for many years and Hossein’s pieces are in line with what we scour the market for.”

In the past, Rezvani has worked with noted artists such as Mohammad Ehsai and Reza Derakshani to create carpets based on their artworks, but this is the first time his own designs are being presented in an exhibition.

• Hossein Rezvani carpets are available exclusively at the Iwan Maktabi carpet gallery in The Dubai Mall. For more information, please visit www.iwanmaktabi.com