As a costume designer, Berlin-based talent Rebekka Stange knows fibers like the back of her hand, having created garments for theater and opera productions in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland and for films by directors like Francis Lawrence and Roland Emmerich. Her latest venture allows her to explore their relationship to interior space.

Officially launched in 2022 after a successful presentation during Salone del Mobile, her new company, Räkki Rugs, offers handmade Tibetan loop knotted carpets, designed with Stange’s well-trained eye for hue, material, and detail. Dyed, woven, and finished in collaboration with artisans in Kathmandu, Nepal, that she met during a scouting trip in early 2020, Räkki’s output is the result of a meticulous manufacturing process. But, from her studio in Germany, Stange approaches each rug like a work of art.

“I’m very interested in how colors affect us,” she said. Stange showed a selection of Räkki pieces, each with its own personal flair—from a graphic abstraction of nature with pops of deep orange to a geometric color field in muted blue, green, and gray tones—at 2024’s 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen. Citing artists like Olafur Eliasson and Ellsworth Kelly, her own explorations in photography, and costume design as inspiration, she begins every rug design with a small watercolor. The medium is appealing for its “light reflecting” quality, one that Stange then emulates in the tactile floor coverings.

Woven into intricate Tibetan knots or now-rare traditional cross knots—a recent exploration Stange debuted at 3 Days of Design—to make carpets, her abstract patterns literally shine, whether they’re made from vegetable-dyed Tibetan highland wool, Nepalese nettle for durable grip, or Chinese silk for shimmer. For a designer who has focused her career on nailing the details, the handmade nature of these pieces has taught her how to embrace the beauty in irregularity. She noted: “It’s a little bit like painting a rug, in the end.”