On Thursday 22 March, a balmy summer day in Sydney, dozens of curious and intrigued interior designers from across the city came together at the Fanuli showroom for Designer Rugs’ inaugural ‘Lunch and Learn’ event. 

What do teabags have to do with art, or much less, interior design? For Ruth Levine, mixed-media sculptor, multi-award-winning interior designer and fellow of the Design Institute of Australia the humble teabag offers a warming cup of tea, an unexpected yet highly adaptable material for her sculptural works, and the inspiration for ‘Conversations’, one of the four Designer Rugs x Levine Vokaberg pieces that have just been released.

The teabag, as Levine shared, is all about connection and conversation; a way of remembering to cherish the quiet moments in life and give them tangible, expressive form. This notion, together with Designer Rugs lead designer Lia Pielli’s suggestion that she is a translator for the artists, served as the entry point for the panel discussion, which celebrated the intersection of art and design and the limitless potential for transforming creative expression into living spaces. 

As the Fanuli showroom began to fill, designers gravitated towards the three stunning rugs which had been suspended to create a warm, cozy backdrop for the panel conversation – and the abundant grazing table. Once hunger was satisfied, Designer Rugs marketing manager Ammie Marshall ushered everyone to get comfortable on one of the many Fanuli lounge chairs and sofas that had been set up to feel like home. 

This was not your typical panel discussion. There were no rows of lecture theatre-style chairs. Panel moderator Jessica Agoston Cleary invited the audience to participate in the conversation from the outset. “In the spirit of collaboration, I encourage anyone who feels inspired to share their thoughts while we’re chatting to please raise your hand,” Agoston Cleary said. “This is not a lecture, it’s a conversation!”

And with that, Levine began to unpack the meaning of a teabag and shared that, for her, it’s about the process of experimentation and wondering, ‘What if?’. The end result, when it comes to her artwork, is often entirely unpredictable.

For Jessica Heneka, co-founder, director and interior designer at Levine Vokaberg, it was this shared appreciation for seeing the beauty and potential in the discarded and overlooked that led to her being hired by Levine 20 years ago. When asked about the influence Levine has had on her process as a designer, Heneka recalled: “I thought it was going to be my portfolio of schemes, drawings and plans that I’d spent hours putting together that would get me the job. But it was actually the lampshades I’d made out of discarded silk screens.” 

“I thought they were fantastic!”, Levine exclaimed. “I knew that we got each other and would work well together.”  

The relationship between experimenting, trial and error and embracing the unexpected quickly became the key theme. Levine’s ‘show and tell’ captivated the highly engaged crowd as she shared her stitched-together teabags and Japanese ink-stained coffee filters.

The second thread that Agoston Cleary wove through the conversation was that of trust, suggesting that for designers, artists and curators alike, a great deal of trust goes hand-in-hand with translating a vision into reality. 

For Curatorial+Co founder and director Sophie Vander, trust between herself, her artist, her client and the designer’s client, is an essential element, “especially when it comes to commissions” because an original artwork is always going to have an element of the unexpected. “There’s sometimes a tense moment when you’re thinking, ‘God, I hope they like it’,” Vander said. 

She has never had a situation where it’s all gone pear-shaped, because in developing the triangulated trust relationship, the clients and the artist inevitably get to know one another. “When you understand the process and the story of the person who created the work, there’s another layer of connection, so even if the piece is not exactly as imagined, it’s still perfect and has significance,” Vander said.

Designer Rugs lead designer Lia Pielli shared that she, too, works from a place of trust. “The process of translating an artist or designer’s work into a rug is really complex, so we take our time to test and experiment to get to the perfect end result that does justice to their work,” she said. 

From end to end, the process for the Designer Rugs x Levine Vokaberg collection took years, beginning during the COVID-19 pandemic when the kernel of an idea for the collaboration was first put forward. Through a process of collective elimination, dozens of designs were whittled down to the final four. 

Pielli described the fascinating process of translating the designs into rugs, sharing that getting from the idea to the final, beautifully hand-woven rugs that guests could touch and feel on the day took approximately 12 months. From colour sampling, testing combinations of loop pile and tufted areas to create dynamic texture and experimenting with scale, every decision is made with the artist and the end client in mind.

Which is perhaps the fundamental difference between art and design. To conclude the conversation, Agoston Cleary sought answers to the age-old question: what is the difference between art and design? The panel were unanimous in their belief that art is about feeling and making you think –  that feeling or thought doesn’t always have to be comfortable. Design on the other hand has a utilitarian or functional purpose – but that doesn’t mean that it can’t also be beautiful and artful. 

To wrap up an afternoon of creative thinking, Designer Rugs general manager Caroline Edwards thanked both the panel and Fanuli. Edwards encouraged everyone to linger, ask questions, look at the artworks on display from Ruth Levine and a selection of Curatorial+Co’s artists, and enjoy another glass of Prosecco.

In what was the first of many collaborative and stimulating Lunch and Learn events to come, Designer Rugs has elevated the showroom event to a new level. Given they’ve been leaders in the custom rug industry for decades, this comes as no surprise. Certainly, the biggest surprise of the day was that it all started with a cup of tea.