Sanderson

Sanderson: 165 Years of British Design, Down to the Floor

In 1860, Arthur Sanderson opened a business in Islington importing fine French wallpapers for the London market. Within twenty years he had moved into his own factory in Chiswick and was printing his own designs. Within sixty-four years, the company held a Royal Warrant as purveyor of wallpapers and paints to King George V — a relationship with the Royal Household that has continued without interruption for over a century. Today, Sanderson is part of the Sanderson Design Group alongside Morris & Co., Zoffany, and Harlequin, and its archive — held in Denham, Buckinghamshire — contains over 160 years of original artwork, printing blocks, fabric samples, and design drawings that the studio draws from in every new collection.

The rug range, produced in partnership with the Dutch manufacturer Brink & Campman, brings that same archive to the floor. The process is not reproduction — the design team identifies source material from the archive, then reconstructs it for hand-tufted construction in New Zealand wool and viscose, reworking scale, palette, and repeat to suit the technical and visual demands of a rug format. The results feel like Sanderson work because they are: the botanical hand-drawing, the colour relationships, the confidence with floral pattern at large scale all read as continuous with the wallpaper and fabric collections the brand has been producing for generations.

What Defines the Collection

Three broad design territories run through the rug range, and they correspond directly to the territories Sanderson has occupied since the late nineteenth century:

• Florals and botanicals — the core of the brand. Designs such as Poppies, Etchings & Roses, and Waterperry translate Sanderson's most recognised archival motifs into pile, with colour palettes that coordinate closely with the corresponding wallpaper and fabric collections. These are not generic flower-pattern rugs; they carry the specific illustrative style — hand-drawn, botanically precise, scale-considered — that has distinguished Sanderson work from the start.
• Geometrics and abstracts — archive-sourced patterns redrawn for contemporary interiors. Trellis, ogee, and tile-based constructions in stone, charcoal, soft sage, and warm neutral tones that work as a ground layer beneath bolder furnishings or as the primary pattern in quieter rooms.
• Oriental and chinoiserie references — a territory Sanderson has explored since the nineteenth century, when trade routes brought Japanese, Indian, and Chinese visual vocabularies into British design. The Water Garden and Pagoda designs carry these references forward in palettes that sit inside both traditional and contemporary schemes.

The Sanderson Rug in a Room

The practical value of buying a Sanderson rug — as opposed to a rug that happens to share a similar aesthetic — is coordination. The collections are built to work alongside Sanderson wallpaper, fabric, and paint: the Poppies rug shares its palette with the Poppies wallpaper; the Waterperry design aligns with the Waterperry fabric collection. For anyone designing a complete room scheme within the Sanderson range, the floor covering is part of the same considered system rather than an afterthought sourced from elsewhere.

The full Sanderson rug collection is available through SayRug — one of the brand's specialist UK stockists, carrying the range alongside coordinating wallpaper, fabric, and paint references for those working on a complete interior scheme.