About

The story of Keleem is rooted in tradition, culture and family.

Eren and Selim, wife and husband, graphic designer and architect, were both brought up in Istanbul. Literally as soon as they could crawl, they began to appreciate that handwoven rugs were part of their culture and part of their connection to family.

As in many Turkish homes, there were rugs everywhere, many of them heirlooms inherited from generations past. Each rug had its own history, and each one’s value was not just in the skill of the weave but in its ability to tell a story.

In time, Eren and Selim began to rediscover the objects which had given them so much pleasure. Admiration for weft and warp turned into a growing desire to design their own rugs and to tell their own stories.

They set about making rugs that did not force tradition into modern design, but would work and rework that tradition. The challenge was to respect the aesthetic values inherited from the past but integrate them into a life-style and environment that was functional and contemporary. Hard work, some late-night inspiration and the creation of a new methodology produced the solution: modular rug tiles. With the use of deceptively simple modular patterns and by alternating the direction of the tiles, they created a whole new topography and the possibility of a vast array of compositions.

The first Keleem collection is evocative of traditional rugs and makes use of ancient Anatolian techniques of weaving and dying wool. However, they have an integrity, style and feel which is unique, aiming to locate what is truly contemporary in an ancient art.