GUR rugs focus on tradition, allowing us to discover the expansion of artistic forms using traditional materials and techniques of the artisan weaving history and culture from Portugal. All rugs by GUR are handmade. Held in a traditional handloom with raw rag. Embossed technique or over layers of colors. Finished with basic sewing.
GUR can be the first place where you put your feet in the morning, a picnic friend or a frame in your living room. Célia is the founder of GUR rugs and always remembers having hand woven rugs in her house and in their friends and family's homes too. They are very typical in Portugal and they have always been more or less the same; beautiful in their own way but very simple, using randomly chosen recycled materials from textile factories.
After some years working at an artist's print studio in Porto, Célia was invited to an exhibition in her hometown, where the intention was to make a bridge between artisans of traditional handcrafts and young designers. It was here that she worked on a design for the handloom with the weaver Cláudia Vilas Boas and they made the first GUR. Célia was so happy with the result and found it so exciting that she wanted to share the experience. She asked some of her illustrator friends to design one too, and GUR started.
The essence of GUR is making these typical Portuguese rugs more fun. We use the same techniques with carefully selected materials. The rugs are very authentic to what they have always been but now they involve a design factor working with artists and illustrators, translating their ideas into rugs.
