MAKERS | ASIA & ASIA PACIFIC | INDIA & AUSTRALIA | TEXTILES

Jodie Fried and Sally Pottharst | Textile Designers

For Jodie Fried and Sally Pottharst, Armadillo began with a simple desire: to make the kind of rugs they wanted in their own homes. "Something simple, beautiful, natural and exceptionally well made, with a real respect for the hands that made it." Fried, a former costume and production designer, found her way to India and its extraordinary culture of craft; Pottharst came from a family steeped in the flooring trade. Since founding Armadillo in 2009, the pair have worked between Los Angeles, London and the Adelaide Hills, developing their rugs slowly with generations of Indian artisans.

How did you begin?

Jodie: "I began my design career with textiles. I trained as a costume and production designer and spent close to a decade working across film, theatre and dance. My work eventually took me to India, where I worked in the Bollywood film industry, and that experience really changed the direction of my life.

"I fell in love with India, with its people, and particularly with the extraordinary culture of craft and making that is so embedded in everyday life there. That led me to start my first textiles company, designing and working with rural artisans in India. Through that work I met Sally who came from a family with a history in the flooring and rug industry.

"We very quickly realised that we shared the same frustration, we simply couldn't find the kind of rugs we wanted for our own homes. Something simple, beautiful, natural and exceptionally well made, with a real respect for the hands that made it. So, in 2009, what we couldn't find, we decided to make ourselves. That was the beginning of Armadillo."

How did you learn?

Sally: "From people who knew more than I did. I grew up in Zimbabwe among makers, taught art and textile printing after school, and then trained as a chartered accountant, which is an unusual route into craft. My husband's floorcoverings business in Adelaide brought me back to it.

"The real education has been 17 years of sampling alongside our weavers: why a yarn behaves the way it does; why knot density changes the hand of a rug; why a color shifts once it is on the loom. A master weaver will tell you when you are wrong, and they are usually right."

Pure silk rugs from Armadillo's new Venezia collection, handmade in India. 

Who or what most influences your work?

Sally: "We are influenced by the world around us, and particularly by travel. It is often not the obvious things that stay with us, but the light, the landscape, the architecture, the colors and textures of a place. Those things quietly find their way into our work.

"Nature has always been an enormous reference, particularly when it comes to color. We tend to look for colors that feel grounded and have a certain depth to them, rather than something that belongs to a particular moment or trend. We want to create rugs that people can live with for a very long time.

"Material is also incredibly important. Wool, jute, linen and silk all behave differently and have their own character, texture and lustre. Often the material itself leads the design, rather than us imposing too much upon it. There is a simplicity and honesty in that which has always been very important to us."

Jodie: "For me personally, my ceramics practice has definitely influenced the way I think about form, proportion and restraint. Working with clay also reminds me how important the hand of the maker is. That is something we have always valued at Armadillo. Our relationship with our weavers is very collaborative, there is a constant exchange of ideas, knowledge and skill between us, and ultimately the work is richer because of it."

How do you plan, prepare, and create your works?

Sally: "Slowly, and deliberately. We think of a rug as a sensory foundation for a room, the thing everything else sits on, so it has to live in harmony with the furniture, art and architecture around it rather than fight them. That shapes every decision.

"Every construction goes through roughly two to five years of development before it reaches a floor. Fiber, structure, knot count and finish are decided before color, because they determine how color reads. Then we sample the product until the rug on the loom matches the one we intended, and we test it in real homes before we sell it. 

"The process itself is ancient. Yarn hand-dyed and sun-dried, spun on hand winders, knotted on traditional looms, washed, and finished with scissors. The work is slow because our standard is high."

What does a typical day look like?

Jodie: "I am definitely an early bird with 5:30am starts like a morning song bird! There is nothing better than that first cup of tea in the quiet moment of the morning before the rest of the house wakes up. Mornings are usually a juggle of a busy breakfast kitchen, school runs and early meetings, but I always try to fit in a long walk or pilates before properly starting my day.

"My days are never the same, always a balance of my work at Armadillo across product development, creative direction and campaigns and being in in my ceramics studio, which keeps me centred and creating with my hands. I love to cook, so I try to end the day with everyone around the table for dinner, food is my love language. Early to rise means early to bed, usually with a book."

Sally: "I typically start out my day with exercise – running is my happy place, or walking my Jack Russell dogs. In the bulk I work from my home now – its hard to leave our 30 acre property. The spread of our team does mean a fair bit of travel, which makes working from home when I am back there even better – and my dogs love having me there too!"

A handmade silk rug from Armadillo's new Venezia collection.

A place or space that most inspires you?

Jodie: "My ceramics studio is probably the place where I feel most creatively alive. I am constantly looking and absorbing things wherever I go – art, architecture, the texture and colours of a landscape, the work of other artists, or something unexpected I notice while travelling. I think I am always quietly collecting these references.

"The studio is where all of that gets to land. It is a very instinctive space for me, where I can be alone with my thoughts, work with my hands and allow an idea to unfold without necessarily knowing where it is going. There is something incredibly grounding about clay and the physical act of making. It gives me the freedom to experiment, make mistakes, change direction and follow my curiosity. It is probably the place where I feel most peaceful, but also most creatively energised."

Sally: "I am a serious nature lover – multi day walks are where I am at my most inspired – so much to see that you have to make that extra physical effort to, that you could never see from a car or even a bike or where there are crowds of people – the beauty in our natural world astounds me with every walk I do."

Handmade silk rugs from Armadillo's Venezia collection, photographed on location in Italy. 

How does your relationship with Armadillo's artisan community in India influence the way you design?

Jodie: "It really is the foundation of everything we do. My relationship with India and its artisans existed before Armadillo, and many of the relationships we have today have been built over decades. These are people and communities we know incredibly well, and there is a huge amount of trust, respect and shared knowledge between us.

"We don't design something in isolation and then ask someone to make it. It is a very collaborative process. Different artisans have extraordinary knowledge of particular techniques, and often an idea will evolve through conversations, sampling and experimentation together. We might push them to try something they haven't done before, and equally they will show us something we hadn't imagined.

"That human connection is incredibly important. We know the hands behind what we make, and we understand the time, skill and knowledge that goes into every piece."

How did Venice’s colors, light, and atmosphere inform your latest collection?

Jodie: "Sally and I developed the palette together, drawing from Venice itself, but also from the paintings we were looking at. The deep, extraordinary colors in the silks and fabrics depicted by painters of that time, including Vermeer, were a huge inspiration, as were the aged frescoes, painted ceilings and incredible patina we saw throughout Venice.

"Getting those colors right in silk was a long process. We spent months dye sampling because color behaves so differently once it is hand-knotted in silk. The light changes it completely, which was really the whole point of the collection."

Your new Venezia collection is made entirely from pure silk. How does this material shape the collection's color, texture, and movement? 

Sally: "Pure silk carries dye differently to wool or plant fibers. It is smoother and more uniform, so color sits with a depth and clarity no other fiber can match. Reds become more radiant. Blues and greens gain unexpected depth. Neutrals turn complex. Movement is the quality people rarely anticipate. We kept the pile low, around three-eighths of an inch on a cotton warp and weft at a restrained knot count, so the silk catches every touch of light. Walk across it and the pile shifts and reflects differently.

"The same rug reads lighter or darker depending on where you stand, and the areas you live on develop a patina over time. This is the nature of silk, and the reason to make a rug in it. Silk is far more durable than its reputation suggests, and Venezia was made to be lived on rather than admired from a distance." 

One more thing... What music do you listen to while you work?

Jodie: "I’ve been enamoured with the voice and music of French artist Zaho de Sagazan. There is something incredibly emotive and lyrical about her music that I find really inspiring. It has this beautiful balance of vulnerability and strength. There is something about her music that allows me to disappear into my own world a little, slow down and become completely absorbed in the process of making."

Sally: "When I am working at home alone, I prefer silence! But in a work space I am not that picky – provided its not heavy metal!"

Interview by Team Cabana

Images from Armadillo