Ghislaine's Page

The Appel rug was as you can see a very large project.
It was ordered by the local music hall in Tilburg, the Netherlands, they wanted to bring back their interior to the original feel of 1960 when it was build, so they also wanted to add art from that period.
The painting they chose was from a Dutch artist Karel Appel, the painting called 'two heads' was made by him in 1956.
The original was about 28'' by 20'' and had to be translated into a rug of 19' by 16'.
I used a slide to project it on a large piece of paper and then traced all the different colors and marked the color changes, then this was again traced onto the fabric on which I work.
The work was too large so we had to divide it into 2 pieces with a jagged edge so the division would not be visible afterwards.
The project took about 6 months, I had the luck that 2 students were helping me, they did about one third of the whole rug and I did the rest.
The technique I use is called hand tufting, the little machine is actually used in carpet making for when there are needles in the big machines not working properly and so they can repair the carpet by adding the missing bit.
The hand tufting machine has a hollow needle and through it you shoot about 6 threads of wool at once, so this means you can mix colors and in such a way it enables you to also go gradually from one color to the other and give a design way more depth.
Karel Appel himself saw the rug and was very impressed by it, sadly enough I was not able to be there to meet him (I do have a picture of him with the rug though) but it seems he expected a simple translation of his painting, I was able though to make an almost perfect copy because of the technique I use.