The Goldfish
Our newest collection is named for the title character’s pre-human form in Ponyo, a 2008 film by Hayao Miyazaki based loosely on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and a number of Japanese folktales.
We loved Ponyo before we became parents, and before quarantine, but those factors added potency as we revisited it - again and again - with our young daughter (at the start of the movie, Ponyo lives underwater inside a literal bubble). The specific and often contradictory rules we live with now can feel like the enchantment at the beginning of a fairytale: we encourage our child to explore and connect with others and her environment, but hold her back from touching anything outside our home, or getting too close to anyone, even other children. The five rugs in this collection are our attempt to capture some of the playfulness, strangeness and innocence of both that film and raising a young child in these times.
As we approach the anniversary of our first year in quarantine, we look for new ways to connect - to each other and to other people, to the products we design and the spaces they inhabit. Our own home descends deeper each day into an ankle-high tangle of duplo, magic markers, toy trucks, stuffed animals, and the contents of any cabinets or drawers under 3ft high. So there’s both an ease (and, always, an unease) in that momentary escape - to the bathroom usually - to stare through our phones at the beautiful homes of other people.
During quarantine, instead of formal lookbook shoots, we decided to send the collection to someone whose home we admire. They style the rugs however they like and send us pictures taken on their phones. These glimpses may be the closest we’ll come to a visit for some time, and they feel like like the safest way to highlight spaces we enjoy. The results are intimate portraits of our rugs and of these homes we love, as well as documentation of how people occupy their spaces, especially now that those spaces are subject to heavier use than ever before.
For our newest lookbook, our friend Katarina Matsson shot and styled The Goldfish rugs in her incredible home. Since she was shooting in Sweden in the wintertime, Katarina had to wait weeks for enough sunlight and we could not be happier with what she captured.
Photographed and Styled by Katarina Matsson
