Rigby & Rigby visits Loomah Showroom

A creative evening with our supplier

As interior designers, we spend our days surrounded by colour, texture, pattern and creativity, so when the opportunity comes along to step away from our desks and get hands on with a new craft, the team jump at it.

Loomah kindly invited us down to their showroom on the Kings Road earlier this year and it turned out to be the perfect way to spend a evening together. Not only did the team get to try out hand tufting (a lot harder than it looks) but it also gave us the chance to form a closer relationship with a new supplier and connect with the people behind the products and materials we work with every day.

Building strong relationships with our suppliers is such an important part of what we do. It creates a real sense of partnership and trust, so if things get tricky on a project you can work as a team together to find a way forward. The workshop gave us the opportunity to properly get to know the team, understand more about what they do and create a connection. It was a great reminder that successful projects are built not just on great products, but on great relationships with the people behind them. Thank you Amber Meyer for organising this.

discovering the art of hand-tufting

Hand tufting is a very tactile process, yarn is worked into a stretched backing using a tufting gun to build up the design. Often starting from a sketch or a simple idea, there is an incredible amount of freedom, from colour and shape, to texture and pile height. Having the opportunity to try hand tufting ourselves gave us a completely different appreciation for the craftsmanship, it certainly needs skill, precison and patience!

During our visit, we also discovered Avalon by Loomah, a new collection that brings hand-tufted rug production right here to Britain. Being proudly partnered with Made in Britain®, all Avalon rugs are made to order and hand-tufted by skilled British artisans.

The collection uses premium worsted wool and bamboo viscose yarns, creating beautiful depth, texture and softness, while each design has been carefully developed and sampled by Loomah’s London based team.

One of the biggest advantages for us designers is the lead time. With stock yarns and British production, Avalon can offer around six weeks from order to delivery, a real benefit when working to tight deadlines.

Discovering this new range made our visit even more worthwhile. It’s exciting to see a supplier we’re building a relationship with develop a collection that combines British craftsmanship and practical lead times, proving that bespoke doesn’t always have to mean a long wait.

team bonding and creativity

Our Loomah workshop was a good reminder that team bonding doesn’t always have to mean dinner, drinks or another organised activity. Sometimes, doing something completely different and making something together is enough to bring people out of work mode and give everyone a chance to connect.

It has been a busy few months with project installations and with summer coming to an end, it feels like a good time to get back into hobbies. Given that we are in the creative world, its important for us to keep inspired for future projects, whether its hand-tufting, pottery, painting or picking up an old hobby. Taking the time to make something for the sake of making it can be just as valuable as the work itself.

Here’s to finding a little more time for creativity, curiosity and making things together.