Massimo Copenhagen

Sustainable, handmade rugs made from precious materials

M assimo Copenhagen’s range of hand-knotted, hand-woven, high-quality rugs showcases the company’s use of sustainable materials and close attention to craftsmanship.

“A good rug should act as an integrated element in an overall interior rather than steal the attention from everything else in the room.” This is what Mads Frandsen believes. He is CEO of Massimo Copenhagen, a company that specialises in high-quality, hand-woven and hand-knotted rugs that combine sustainable materials with centuries-old craftsmanship and design tradition.

Massimo Copenhagen started in 2001, importing furniture from Italy, but soon saw the potential in rugs, exploiting the expertise of Frandsen’s wife, who has a background in fashion and textiles. Over the past 15 years, the company has grown steadily right up until today, and now exports its top-quality rugs to all parts of the world.

About five years ago, the company took the innovative decision to try to use bamboo as a manufacturing material, and Massimo Copenhagen can be considered a forerunner to the many sustainable interior design offers available today. Frandsen mentions some of the great properties of bamboo: “Bamboo gives a luxurious feeling due to its unique softness and shiny surface. In addition, bamboo fibres have strong durability, stability and tenacity, and peeling is minimised to almost nothing.”

If you add sustainability to this – as bamboo thrives without any pesticides and is biodegradable – then it is little wonder that bamboo is being used to replace a lot of the less green materials in many different products.

Frandsen also points out a lesser-known quality of bamboo: the way it reflects the light. “Bamboo has the same feeling and shine as velvet,” he explains. Massimo Copenhagen’s latest collection exploits this quality to create optical illusions, as one colour tone wraps into the next and reflections change depending on the light. Furthermore, the rugs Moon Night, Copper Moon and Space Surface also reference the traditional Scandinavian colour pallet and very Nordic approach of making each element part of a unified whole.

The company will be exhibiting at Milan Furniture Fair this April, an occasion which Frandsen very much looks forward to: “In terms of crafts and design, Milan Furniture Fair is the most important date in the calendar. Competition is tough to get a stand there, and I’m proud that we can be part of it.”

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