Cover Magazine
In its fifty-fourth year, this Antwerp rug shop is a pioneering presence on the Belgian rug scene. Rachel Meek talks to its second- generation owner, Reza Ashtari, and his business partner, Wendy Guns.
Antwerp-based Ashtari Carpets has an impressive heritage and a forward-thinking approach to the creation of handmade carpets. In 2017, Reza Ashtari took over the firm from his father, Ata Ashtari. With his business partner, Wendy Guns, he has steered the company into interesting new territories, via regular collaborations with other Belgian creatives and companies.
‘My father was one of the first Persians to set up a business in Belgium,’ Reza explains. ‘He was an adventurer. Prior to opening his Antwerp shop in 1969, he was selling rugs at auction. Later, he worked with Belgian decorators to better understand his clentele’s tastes and with dealers in the Iranian bazaars. I joined him on buying trips, so I’ve been involved in the carpet business from a young age.’
Like his pioneering father, Reza is moving with the times. In its fifty-fourth year, rather than concentrating on private sales in its shop, the business is increasingly orientated towards the B2B and hospitality sectors in Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. ‘We love to do these kinds of collaborative projects. People know us for them, and they are very important to us—they set us apart from other companies’, says Guns, adding that key to their well-established good reputation is personal service: ‘We personally handle every exchange, from the sale of one carpet to much larger projects.’
Ashtari Carpets’ depth of knowledge and versatility has earned it consultancy work for architects and designers looking for carpet production expertise, as well as many creative collaborations with fashion designers, including Christian Wijnants and Tim van Steenbergen, and artists. Its collaboration with Boy & Erik Stappaerts, Polarization Red and Blue, consisting of two hand-knotted carpets based on Stappaerts’ paintings, is on permanent display at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA). A new collaboration with the award-winning product designer Sébastien Caporusso is forthcoming. Plus the company has twice won prestigious Carpet Design Awards at Domotex: for Carpet Blue/Green, a collaboration with the design house Muller van Severen in 2021; and for Guns’ own Green Agate in 2023.
By working with weavers in Nepal, Pakistan, India, Iran and Belgium, Ashtari Carpets is proud to cater to a wide group of clients, while maintaning its core values of quality, originality, good materials, service, advice, honesty and transparency. These extend across low- to mid-range pricepoints as well as luxury ventures—enabling other retailers to develop more affordable lines of handmade carpets, including a kilim collection for Ethnicraft which has around 3,000 international points of sale. ‘Whatever their budget, people can source a beautiful rug here,’ Guns affirms. www.ashtaricarpets.com
