A Child’s Drawings Inform Cold Picnic’s Frames Rug Collection

The duo behind Cold Picnic, Peter and Sung Buer, have brought their young daughter’s illustrations into the fold with the introduction of the Frames Collection. The bamboo silk rugs and runners include five playful designs made using slightly iridescent yarn, a color palette with pops of neon, and the intention to embrace the contradictions of self-expression: reserve and spontaneity, delicacy and practicality, self-preservation and recklessness.

Bamboo silk is best known for its soft, luxurious, ethereal feel that comes to resemble crushed velvet as time passes. A delicate yet durable fabric, the yarn’s dimension allows its colors to appear differently, depending on the angle views and which way the pile is facing. Bamboo silk is also very fine, enabling the inclusion of more details and delicate lines in the design, which makes the rugs appear more like drawings through a range of shades, shadows, and highlights.

“Working in bamboo silk yarn allows us to use darker colors without worrying about heaviness, since the sheen gives such a wide spectrum of light and color,” said Peter. “We deliberately chose colors that interact with light in order to highlight this feature.”

Peter and Sung’s daughter, Freya, inspired the collection with her oil crayon-on-paper drawings. They include frames drawn along notebook edges and even “mommy’s tummy,” created when Sung was pregnant with her second daughter. The childlike motifs and dark colors of the Frames Collection remain true to the young artist’s original sketches and vision.

“‘Frames’ literally refers to the pages of frames Freya used to fill her notebook with and in our minds, we were translating them into rugs as soon as we saw them,” said Peter. “It made us so happy to turn her drawings into a realized collection, and felt like her official inclusion into Cold Picnic, which she has been influencing since before she was born.”

Sung added, “For us, the mood of the collection conjures a period of childhood that is so short and filled with tenderness. There’s a sense of nostalgia and wistfulness in the collection, as an attempt to capture something almost impossible like time and self-confidence. But the story here is also about acceptance, evolution, and expression.”

Cold Picnic uses color as one of the most important elements of their work, selecting hues according to medium. The Frames Collection features dark greens, blues, and black with pops of neon green and yellow set against a golden palette. Each rug is made in India by skilled artisans at a factory that runs exclusively on solar energy. The rugs are available in sizes 2’x3’,2’3”x6’, 5×5, 4’x6’, 6’x9’, and 8’x10′.

To learn more about the Frames Collection, visit coldpicnic.com.

This post contains affiliate links, so if you make a purchase from an affiliate link, we earn a commission. Thanks for supporting Design Milk!