A SCOTTISH contemporary artist has turned a sign written by a homeless man on a pizza box into a £40,000 luxury hand-tufted rug.
Kevin Harman used the hand-drawn sign made by Steven Jenkins in Edinburgh as the design for the two-metre-square rug crafted by the capital’s Dovecot Studios.
Now the rug, which reads “Can you spare some change for a B+B for the nite it is £20 a nite for it thanks for your help take care God bless” is for sale with a price tag of £35,000-40,000.
Harman has created a range of high-end interiors products inspired by Jenkins called Signs of Life, with a percentage of the profits going to homeless charities.
The artist, whose work is in private collections around the world and is represented by Edinburgh’s Ingleby Gallery, met Jenkins begging for change outside a supermarket near his Edinburgh studio.
Struck by the time and effort he had put into creating his hand-drawn sign, he offered to buy it for £10, and continued to buy his work regularly until he had collected more than 300 signs.
He used their colourful designs to create luxury printed fabric and commissioned artisan seamstress Irene Tweedie to make velvet duck feather cushions which retail for £350 each. Harman said: “I’m interested in the extreme distance between the cardboard sign, which is all about survival, and where the rug might end up, in a large, decadent dwelling.
“I was struck by the attention to detail in Steven’s signs. Although they were made with cardboard and felt-tip pens, I could see how long they had taken him, it made me think about the things people do to survive.”
Dovecot Studios weaver, Louise Trotter, added: “This project is quite different from some of the other rugs I’ve worked on. Often they have a very rich velvety feel, but Kevin wanted something rougher, more like a doormat, so we used a mixture of jute, flax, nylon and really hard wools.”
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