cc-tapis, Weavers of Stories

I’m Nelcya and I was born to an Iranian dad and a French mum. I met Fabrizio at hotel management school 25 years ago and we got married in Portofino.

My mother is English and my father is Italian. We met in Lausanne and we started our career in the hotel industry. I was assistant manager at the Excelsior Palace in Portofino, while Nelya worked in Gênes at the Star Hotel. We got married in Portofino, then we left our jobs in the hotel industry and reinvented ourselves. At the beginning, we wanted to head to New York. Our idea was to open a French/Italian crossover deli, but ultimately, we didn’t end up doing that. On top of that, Nelcya’s father told us that if we wanted to stop by Strasbourg to come and work with him, he’d be happy for us to do so. He was in the carpet industry. Traditional Persian carpets.

Moving from hotels to carpets was a big change for us. The pace of life was very different. But ultimately, we found our way. Everything came together when we travelled to Los Angeles, where we saw a carpet in a Melrose shop window that we had never seen before. We found out more about it and learned that it was a Tibetan carpet, and that it could be customised. The idea was brilliant and it inspired us to develop our own vision for carpets. Fabrizio is really passionate about design, so this vision became a dream for both us. We sorted out our different roles and created cc-tapis in 2001. It started with a single shop, cc-tapis, then another, L’Appart, where we sell everything, from small spoons to full size sofas. In 2006, we decided to focus exclusively on the cc-tapis business in Strasbourg. As Fabrizio had always wanted to work in the design sphere, we decided that it was time for him to go back to school and to come to Milan, where the university was. We only intended to remain for nine months at the start. Ultimately, though, we’ve been here for ten years. We met Daniele Lora, our current artistic director and business partner. The image, harmony, coherence in our carpets: that all comes from him. We all started working together, then we found a showroom in Brera. In short: we started out and we were incredibly lucky, because there was no grand plan at the start.

They are the initials of our surnames: Chamszadeh and Cantoni. When we arrived, we wanted to retain our Frenchness and it’s also pretty chic!

No, because at the beginning, we needed to do whatever worked. Once we’d stopped working with China (due to the working conditions) we quite naturally started looking in India. Then we fell for Nepal completely. The Nepalese people have a very sunny, positive outlook. It was an obvious choice. After visiting the schools there with our son in 2015, and having experienced the earthquake, we decided to start our charity when we returned. Two weeks later we held a Design for Nepal event. We also appealed to all of Milan’s multi-label design retailers, who gave us stock to sell. We donated the funds raised from that first event so that 20 families could have a roof over their heads again. From that moment on, we started Design for Nepal for the schools. We also donate a percentage of our profit each year to the children. At the beginning, in 2015, we helped eight children. Now there are over 45!

Daniele really should have been here to answer that question! Personally, it goes by feeling, going with the flow as you discover and learn, by curiosity. Obviously, when I stared out, Gio Ponti! He’s the father of Italian design. What he was doing in the 30s and 40s is simply incredible! One of the very latest carpets that I designed is called Lost in the Fifties.When doing my research, I discovered a piece of work Gio Ponti had created in the late 40s for an office, which I liked a lot. Being a little curious, I discovered the Capella Sansevereo in Naples, which is where I think Ponti got his inspiration from for the famous office. The same designs were on the marble and the wooden inlays that he used. In short, our inspiration comes from art, travelling, and artists that we like.

We don’t really choose artists in fact. It’s more about a choice of pieces that we love, things that we’ve found by exploration, over the last 23 years!

We might have a few things that are starting to go up in value, but apart from that, it ranges from my nephew’s drawings and posters by a female friend of ours, and others by Shepard Fairey – with his Obey signature – through to Murakami, Jeff Koons, and a lot of Artoys. I love Kozik, for example. So there are busts of all the despots (with an ironic twist, I have to clarify), which drives Nelcya crazy.