modern spring 2006

MARKET PLACE JAN KATH89

Left & far left:

Jan Kath’s Wunderland

advertising campaign

Above:

BoroCollection campaign

at the end of a year out he’d taken in India.

Travelling back home through Nepal he met

workers who wereactually supplying his

father’s company.Through this valuable

insight into the production side of rug-making

he spent two years in the country, working in

quality control for a handful of different manu

facturers, while establishing a vital network of

contacts.After a further trip to Mongolia,

Kath started up on his own back inBochum –

the city at the centre of the Ruhr and the

source of his family’s heritage – with a desire

to win over a new generation of customers.

Balancing his familial appreciation of the

traditional craft techniques with an astute

knowledge of the tastes and desires of the

contemporary consumer is something he

believes is integralto success in the current

climate. “You, me, young people are fed up

with the stuff we’ve grown up with” he says

adamantly. “The field deserves development.

I’m trying to produce the antiques of tomorrow

while making themaccessible to a new

generation who, otherwise, wouldn’t care.

Just look back over the last ten years in

interior magazines, in architecture magazines:

it’s all polished floors. We’re trying to catch

these people – we’re suggesting that you

can keep your coolness, your straightness,

but be warm too. When people understand

the idea of the island that they can create

with a rug, they fall in love with it.”