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Forbo and the National Festival of Making

Following a previous collaboration with HemingwayDesign, they invited Forbo to take part in this year's festival- and we were delighted to accept!

The National Festival of Making is a unique celebration of UK making, now in its third year, the Festival takes over the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire.

This year, our Tessera Chroma carpet tile collection was the inspiration for the 'Offcut' series of artwork produced by our Artist in Residence, Anna Ray. Click here to hear Anna talking about the production of the artwork and see the final pieces.
How Tessera Chroma inspired Anna Ray's Off-cut artwork
Explore our HemingwayDesign collectionHemingwayDesign collection

Festival of Making 2019
Anna Ray, textile artist, at Forbo Flooring Systems

Art in Manufacturing

Art in Manufacturing is the National Festival of Making’s headline commissioning programme – providing artists an opportunity to make new work in, and alongside, major industry.

We were delighted to be paired with textile artist Anna Ray as the Artist in Residence in our carpet tile plant which is just 10 miles from the festival itself. Anna worked closely with our Design department and manufacturing teams to develop a series of artworks which were seen for the first time at the festival.

To learn more about Anna, visit her website
www.annaray.co.uk
Watch Anna as she explores our carpet tile production site and finds inspiration in our yarns.
Art in Manufacturing

Anna Ray and Forbo work in progress

Anna Ray meets Forbo Flooring

The possibilities of textiles have been the career preoccupation of the artist, Anna Ray, working with cloth, fibre and thread to realise eye-popping gallery installations at the same time as working in fine detail on delicately sewn ‘drawings’. Anna has developed and shown work with organisations including the Turner Contemporary in Margate and the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

Read how Anna and Janet Lowe, Head of Marketing UK and Ireland for Forbo Flooring Systems, collaborated on the project in a Art of Manufacturing Q&A.Anna and Forbo Q&A

Image courtesy of Anna Ray

Anna Ray and part of the Offcut series of artworks made from Tessera Chroma yarn

The inspiration behind the concepts

The process of creation was very quick as Anna first visited our Lancashire carpet tile production only three months before the festival. She developed a series of works,entitled 'Offcut', all of which have reference to the materials and machinery that she discovered during her time at our production site near Preston.

The artwork was inspired by the yarn used in Tessera Chroma, our new commercial carpet tile range. Anna noticed how ‘the Aquafil yarn changes from the a fine silky appearance when just off the cone, becoming bulky and fluffy when steamed’.
Explore our Tessera Chroma range

Here, Anna Ray and Forbo Senior Designer, Sarah Foster-Smith, discuss the differences in process when designing a piece of art or creating a new carpet tile collection,
Artist and Designer discuss the inspiration behind the concepts

Image courtesy of Anna Ray

One of Forbo's carpet tile tufting machines

Inspired by Manufacturing

Anna sees the production machinery we use to make carpet tiles through the eyes of an artist ‘On Forbo’s factory floor, I watched the incredible tufting machines in action, and delighted in the comparison to my sewing machine in the studio, which suddenly seemed very small. Each of the industrial tufting machines at Forbo has hundreds of sewing needles lined up in a row, punching threads into the cloth at an incredible rate and with absolute precision, like a marching army, in unison'..

Here's a glimpse of our tufting machines in action
Forbo Tessera carpet tiles tufting machines

Image courtesy of Anna Ray