Nani Marquina & Elisa Padrón

Founded by designer and entrepreneur Nani Marquina, a pioneering Barcelona-based contemporary rug company called nanimarquina continues to explore combinations of the old and the new in its designs — an attribute that sets the brand apart as a leader in the textiles industry. Over the years, the founder has collaborated with designer and Canary Islands native Elisa Padrón on the company’s award-winning Tres collection. 

Modern style meets traditional craftsmanship in the graphic and richly colorful rugs that populate nanimarquina’s showrooms. A family-run business, nanimarquina creates timeless, long-lasting rugs and carpets that bring alluring textures and pops of color into contemporary spaces while paying homage to the ancient traditions associated with carpet-making. 

In 1961, Spanish industrial designer Rafael Marquina won the FAD Award for his design of an oil cruet. Inspired by her father’s creativity, Nani Marquina studied industrial design at the Escola Massana before pursuing a career in interior design. Marquina soon discovered that the market for furnishings didn’t exactly offer a wealth of modernist rugs to complement contemporary interiors, so Nani began designing her own textiles and founded her eponymous brand In 1987.

Bringing in leading Spanish designers including Pere “Peret” Torrent, Sybilla and Javier Mariscal, nanimarquina quickly became a leader in textile design, garnering praise in Europe as well as the United States.

Marquina traveled to India, Nepal and Pakistan to learn about their rug-making traditions. Inspired by the hard work and skill demonstrated by traditional weavers — and moved by how fundamental rug-making is to the cultural history of these parts of the world — Marquina decided to move the company in a new direction. In 1994, nanimarquina relocated its production facilities to India to work with the region’s talented artisans (today, the manufacturer produces rugs in Nepal, Pakistan and India). 

Maria Piera Marquina, Nani’s daughter, now heads the company as CEO, helping nanimarquina continue to expand into the international market and maintain its prominent position as a purveyor of fine textiles worldwide. The manufacturer’s founder has partnered with Marcos Catalán to make poufs upholstered with kilims, and she collaborated with Padrón to create the Tres collection. 

Nanimarquina’s Tres series is a luxurious line of hand-loomed rugs (and poufs) that is inclusive of textiles intended for both indoor and outdoor spaces. The Tres rug is a traditional Indian Dhurrie flat weave rug. The collection has won a range of awards, including the El País Out of Series award in 2016 and the Good Design Award in 2017 and 2018. The Tres outdoor rugs are water- and weather-resistant and are made with 100% recycled PET fibers, which is a process that involves recovering and reusing polyethylene waste. The Tres Vegetal collection fits well into rustic interiors and is equally eco-conscious — it’s made of jute fibers, which is a wholly natural 100% biodegradable and recyclable fiber.

Padrón continues to create rugs for nanimarquina and directs the company’s in-house design team, which includes award-winning designer Ariadna Miquel.

Nanimarquina is as dedicated to the communities that are home to the brand’s facilities as it is to producing quality textiles. In collaborating with the Care & Fair association, nanimarquina founded the Kala project, which directs a portion of their earnings to ensure education for their workers and their families. Nanimarquina also uses recycled materials such as bicycle tires in some of their designs and has incorporated the use of biodegradable, eco-friendly materials in the rug-making process. 

Nanimarquina’s dazzling designs have earned the company many accolades and international recognition. Their designs have received the Red Dot Award and the IWEC award, among others. Authentic Nanimarquina textiles have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Salone del Mobile and at the Council of Human Rights at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva. Nanimarquina’s carpets are available through the company’s hundreds of distributors worldwide, and the brand has partnered with the likes of Fendi, Harrods and Rolls Royce.

Find Nani Marquina and Elisa Padrón rugs on 1stDibs.