Rug designer Sabina Ungeheuer, who has created custom designs for Lee Jofa, Kravet, and Doris Leslie Blau, has teamed up with 25-year-old entrepreneur Dorian Miroddi to found Grit & Ground, a new contemporary rug company which will, starting this summer, be sold exclusively via Bloomingdale’s and online. “We believe your floor is naked and needs to be dressed,” explains Miroddi. The design duo sat down with EAL to discuss how they discovered their shared passion—and what’s to come.
How did you two originally connect?
Miroddi: Sabina and I met when she was designing rugs and doing custom projects for Doris Leslie Blau; I became their marketing director in 2012. We immediately hit it off; we started going for weekly sushi lunch dates and became instant friends. We had the same sense of humor and were always cracking up at work (probably more than we should’ve been) and discovered we had a very similar design aesthetic as well. Oddly enough, Sabina and I would even show up to work wearing the same colorway more often than you’d believe.
On our two-and-a-half-year friendship anniversary, we decided to team up and start Grit & Ground, a rug and textile company for people like us: sophisticated but adventurous, fashion-inspired but rooted in tried-and-true technique.
Sabina, how did you first discover your talent for rug design?
Ungeheuer: I once placed one of my abstract paintings on the ground and realized that there was a place for beautiful art on the floor. I always had a love for interior design and realized the smoothest transition from my art was to create it in the form of a rug. I started making samples, and I’ve been a rug designer now for over 10 years.
Do you plan to expand into home furnishing or other product design? Is there a follow-up collection in the works?
Miroddi: Since we just launched, we are going to focus on rugs and pillows, but our understanding of design and textures can translate to any medium! We definitely have plans to expand into other home furnishings. But for now, we are constantly brainstorming new designs for our current collection. As soon as our debut collection went into production, Sabina turned to me and asked, “Ok, what’s next?!”
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