Nuria Kehayoglu

Nuria Kehayoglu is co-CEO of El Espartano and director of Praxis International Art. El Espartano is an Argentinian design company specialised in the textile universe and natural fibres. Founded in 1942, it designs and manufactures a wide range of carpets including wall-to-wall, modular and carpets for residential projects as well as for large corporate, cultural, hospitality and entertainment projects. Praxis is a gallery focused on Latin American contemporary art, based in New York and Buenos Aires. Nuria is also founder and CEO of Bureau des Sens, a start-up focused on the design of bespoke fragrances, and of The Praxis Journal, an arts and culture magazine.

@elespartano.ar

elespartano.com.ar/en/

Lili Tedde

Lili Tedde is the director of Edelkoort South in Brazil. She is editor-in-chief of Proud South, a book series she creates together with Lidewij Edelkoort. Published in recent years, Proud South (2022) and Proud South Craft (2025) aim to raise awareness of the eminent talents that can be found in the Global South. Lili graduated with a degree in law and industrial design from FAAP (Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado) in São Paulo, and completed specialisation courses at Parsons School of Design, New York. In addition, she is currently the ambassador for Brazil at the World Hope Forum.

@lilitedde

edelkoortsth.com

Karen Zeedijk

Karen (Kaat) Zeedijk is a Dutch textile artist and master tufter, whose career began from a deep love of craftsmanship. After training in traditional furniture making and running her own stained glass studio, she encountered tufting at the TextielLab in Tilburg, where she has been working as a tufter in 2003. There, she collaborates with leading artists and designers such as Kiki van Eijk, Wild Animals, Otobong Nkanga, Studio Job and Robert Zandvliet, translating artistic visions into tactile textile works. Alongside her collaborative practice, she has been running her own tuft studio, Fabrikaat, for over 15 years, producing bespoke works for artists and designers. She is also the founder of Tuftlokaal, where she shares her expertise through workshops and masterclasses, and supplies wool and other materials for tufting. In 2023, she received the Maker behind the Maker Award in recognition of her contribution to the realisation of artistic tufting work.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ At the World Hope Forum, she will be honouring the life and career of Lizan Freijsen, with whom she collaborated closely, and who’s inspiring work broke the boundaries of rug design.

fabrikaat.nl

@fabrikaat

tuftlokaal.nl

@tuftlokaal

Alvaro Catalán de Ocón

Alvaro Catalán de Ocón is a renowned Spanish designer recognised for his dedication to the field of design with a focus on protest-related projects, aesthetic expressiveness and practicality in his creations. He's a leading figure among a new generation of Spanish designers who emphasise personal vision, social responsibility and sustainability in their work, shaping the present and future of design. Alvaro's designs are characterised by a strong focus on social and environmental responsibility. He began his career after studying industrial design at the Instituto Europeo di Design in Milan, and at Central Saint Martins in London, subsequently founding his studio in Barcelona. His notable creations include the La Flaca lamp, the PET Lamp project that combines PET plastic bottles with artisan craftsmanship, and the Plastic Rivers rug collection made from recycled PET plastic. Alvaro's innovative approach involves combining traditional crafts from different parts of the world with industrial manufacturing processes to create functional and contemporary objects that address social and ecological issues. ACdO/, co-founded alongside Enrique Romero de la Llana and Sebastian Betanzo, serves as a platform for self-producing and marketing his most personal projects.

catalandeocon.com

petlamp.org

acdo.es

@alvarocatalandeocon

@petlamp

@acdo.es

Lucy Upward

Lucy Upward is Editor of COVER magazine and Senior Editor of HALI magazine, two London-based publications about rugs, the former contemporary, the latter antique. After joining Hali Publications Ltd, she was part of the editorial team to set up COVER in 2005 and became editor of the title in 2013. As the appreciation of high-end handmade carpets has grown, so has COVER’s relevance in the interiors market. Lucy works at the heart of the contemporary rug world, interviewing key international market figures and reporting on trends and global events plus the latest new brands and developments. She has talked about rug trends at numerous design events including Maison&Objet Paris, Heimtextil Frankfurt, the International Carpet Festival Baku, and Domotex asia/CHINAFLOOR in Shanghai. A graduate in fine art painting from Central Saint Martins in London, Lucy is always searching for creative storytelling in rug and textile design.

cover-magazine.com

hali.com

@_cover_magazine_

@halimagazine

Raffaele & Elisa Carrieri

Altai is an internationally-renowned Milanese gallery that arose from the zealous enthusiasm and research of Raffaele and Elisa Carrieri. The genealogy of Altai’s collections is based on thirty years of investigations along the diagonals of nomadism and a valuable network of over one hundred highly-trained and trusted scouters. For three generations seeking the beautiful but not the obvious, the Carrieris' ever-curious eye has unearthed timeless pieces, drawn from the most ancient roots of human creativity; pieces that are essential to daily life yet inextricably linked to the divine, to the laws of nature that determine life, and the survival of nomadic tribes. Forms, decorations and weaves that ensure human sustenance while seeking the benevolence and protection of the sacred. As the fruit of careful and uncompromising examination, Altai's collections are the world's only and last collections of authentic nomadic carpets and tapestries; a human legacy of enormous cultural importance thus preserved, protected and disseminated through the passion of Raffaele and Elisa.

altai.it/en
@altai_gallery

Jackie Dettmar & Anastasija Lesjak

Jackie Dettmar has extensive experience in the fields of product development, design and marketing. Since 2020, Jackie is the Vice President of Marketing, Design and Product Development at Mohawk Group, the world’s leading producer and distributor of quality commercial flooring. Prior to this, she worked at Mohawk Industries for more than three decades, holding various positions including Vice President of Commercial Product Development and Design from 2010 to 2020. Jackie studied textile science at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, later acquiring an MBA degree in business studies. Mohawk Group is committed to building and serving communities through human-centred design, equity and social enterprise, believing that better floor coverings emerge from better design, innovation and sustainability. Based on longterm collaborations with 13&9 Design and Dr. Richard Taylor of Fractals Research, Mohawk Group’s collections of fractal-based patterns support well-being and are scientifically proven to reduce stress in all types of spaces.

mohawkgroup.com

mohawkind.com

@mohawkgroup

Dr. med. univ. Anastasija Lesjak is the Creative Director and Co-Founder of 13&9 Design, an interdisciplinary design firm that develops products across multiple categories made by local suppliers, artisans and craftspeople. 13&9 also designs products for international companies such as Mohawk Group, XAL Group, Momentum Textiles & Wallcovering, FACT Design and BuzziSpace. Born in Bosnia and educated in Graz, Austria, Anastasija resides and runs her company from Graz, since 2011 titled a UNESCO Design City. Her diverse background, with a medical degree and product design expertise, Anastasija gives her a unique perspective and enhances her team’s interdisciplinary process. In 2018, Anastasija co-founded the ScienceDesignLab with Prof. Dr. Richard Taylor (University of Oregon / Fractals Research). This collaboration investigates biophilic design – the integration of nature into built environments – and translates scientific findings into evidence-based concepts for workspaces, healthcare and education. In addition to her role as Creative Director of 13&9, she also consults for INNOCAD architecture. Anastasija is a frequent speaker at diverse universities and international events. She was awarded with the title “Product Designer of the Year 2019” by Interior Design Magazine and has been announced as one of 13 “Industry Visionaries“ by Delve Magazine in 2025.

13and9design.com

@13and9design

Gwendolyn Collaço

Dr. Gwendolyn Collaço is the Anne S.K. Brown Curator for Military & Society at Brown University. There, she curated Fashioning Insurrection: From Imperial Resistance to American Orientalisms (September 2025 — May 2026), which traced how 19th century materialities of revolution in the Islamicate world, from uniforms to circulating media, were translated into American orientalist dress. For the rest of 2026, Gwendolyn is collaborating with the artist Faig Ahmed on The Attention, the National Pavilion of Azerbaijan, organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Azerbaijan with the support of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation at the 61st Venice Biennale. She was previously the Collections Curator at the Aga Khan Documentation Center, part of Distinctive Collections at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among her projects, she spearheaded an initiative with MIT’s Department of Materials Science & Engineering and Vitrocentre in Switzerland to chemically analyse stained-glass windows from Egypt during their conservation. The related exhibit Refracted Histories through Stained Glass: 19th century Islamic Windows as a Prism into MIT's Past, Present, and Future opened February 2025 — August 2025. Earlier, she was Assistant Curator for Art of the Middle East at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she contributed to the new permanent collection galleries. Over her career thus far, she has also curated numerous exhibits with library special collections, including Returning Splendor to Ruins: Recovering the Alhambra in the 19th century through Plaster Casts & Prints at the Fisher Fine Arts Library of the University of Pennsylvania. Gwendolyn holds a Ph.D. in History of Art & Architecture and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.

@gwendolyn_collaco

@faigahmedstudio

Lidewij Edelkoort

Co-Founder World Hope Forum

Li Edelkoort is a trend forecaster, publisher, humanitarian, design educator and exhibition curator. From 2015-2020 she was the Dean of Hybrid Design Studies at Parsons in New York where she founded a Textile Masters and the New York Textile Month festival. Her thought-provoking writings and podcasts have become increasingly popular at a time when she is regarded as an activist and champion for change. In 2020, she co-founded the World Hope Forum with Philip Fimmano as a platform to inspire the creative community to rebuild a better society. Launched in 2020, PROUD SOUTH is a mesmerising visual book that celebrates the creative forces from the southern parts of the planet. Through the colourful and expressive lens of contemporary fashion, photography, styling and art, Edelkoort and Lili Tedde bring together emerging and established talents from wide and far, illustrating that the axis of global creativity has indeed dramatically shifted. In 2025, Edelkoort is launching a second edition of PROUD SOUTH focusing on craft and design. Of the movement, she says, “A southern generation of creatives is standing up, expressing local craft, embracing regional materials, recognising ancestral practices and cherishing indigenous values.”

@lidewijedelkoort