Heart to hearth

Nkuli Mlangeni-Berg designs textiles that are "made-to-be-touched". Combining her home-grown South African perspective with her more recent Swedish roots, her key to creativity remains collaboration - no matter the distance or design language.

- CHRISTI NORTIER

In 2017, Nkuli Mlangeni-Berg's Sankara rug won Design Indaba's "Most Beautiful Object in South Africa". The hand-woven mohair rug was one of her very first, and heralded the launch of her textile design and collaborative platform, The Ninevites.

Although she now lives in Sweden, Nkuli's textiles continue to be crafted by artisans in South Africa and Lima, Peru, using only natural fibres. She draws on her Ndebele and Zulu heritage, as well as her appreciation for minimalist and modern design, to create the bold, geometric patterns which earned her Monocle's "Best New Talent" award in 2021.

From rugs to cushions and throws, her pieces convey that universal essence of "home" - no matter which corner of the world you may be in. We sat down with the textile designer to find out about her creative process, and what makes a house a home:

Weaving rugs is quite a niche industry. How did you get into it?

I studied at the Kaospilot school in 2016 [the award-winning Danish "school for creative leadership and meaningful entrepreneurship"] and, during my final year project, I researched textiles with a focus on fashion, production processes and techniques. I travelled to South America and met some incredible rug weavers in Peru and we ended up making prototypes. So, it was only by chance I ended up working with textiles - it could easily have been fashion!