Lady Deirdre Dyson’s remarkable journey from aspiring artist to internationally recognised designer reflects a lifetime of quiet determination, creative mastery and entrepreneurial spirit, culminating in 25 years at the helm of her acclaimed rug and carpet brand. Emma Clegg meets Deirdre at her South Gloucestershire home. Photograph above by Paul Grover
“You can’t make a living out of doing art, dear.” Lady Deirdre Dyson’s school headmistress offered this sage advice to her in a post-war culture when all workers were facing significant employment challenges, and getting a job and a regular income was the main priority. Fortunately Deirdre had the courage at the age of 13, as she was about to embark on the standard series of RSA exams offered by her comprehensive school, to go to the headmistress’s office and ask to do GCE Art, a subject that was absent from the school’s curriculum.
“I was really scared, you know – I still think that was really brave of me. I said, ‘I need to do art because I want to be an artist’” The bravery paid off because as a ‘concession’, the headmistress let her do GCE Art as long as she did this alongside her agreed RSA subjects. She passed all eight of her subjects, with distinctions in two maths papers and distinction for GCE Art.
Deirdre’s creative roots trace back to a childhood filled with drawing and painting. “I just always drew,” she says simply. “In my spare time, I’d either be outside or drawing. No one encouraged me; it was just something I did naturally.”
Deirdre’s determination to study art has been dramatically validated in the intervening years. She is now best known for her eponymous carpet and rug brand, which produces intricately hand-knotted, bespoke creations that are admired around the world. With showrooms in London and Paris, and very strong commerce with the US, she is now celebrating 25 years in the business.
School was not an easy fit. Deirdre describes herself as ‘very average’ academically, and she particularly struggled with maths. It wasn’t until much later she realised she was a visual learner, a revelation that explained her childhood frustrations. “When I was at school, if a teacher explained things on the blackboard, I could follow. But I couldn’t retain verbal instructions easily. It only clicked years later when trying to learn French!”
Practicality won out and Deirdre became a secretary. “That’s what people did – you had to get a job. My parents’ generation had just gone through the hardships of war, and everyone was just trying to get by.”
I was always drawing in my lunch breaks. One day, my boss just looked at me and said, ‘You’re in the wrong place. You should go to art college
It was while working for an architecture firm – Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, who are famed for designing the Barbican – that her life took another sharp turn. “I was always drawing in my lunch breaks. One day, my boss just looked at me and said, ‘You’re in the wrong place. You should go to art college.’ And that was it. I thought, yes. Why haven’t I tried?”
What followed was a determined, solitary effort to build a portfolio with no guidance, no internet and barely any exposure to galleries. However, the problem was that all art colleges she approached insisted on five GCEs, and her RSA subjects were not acceptable. She eventually found a place at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London, a private institution willing to take a chance on her, and this set Deirdre on her creative path.
There were conditions for the Byam Shaw place. “The principal said, ‘Did you say you could do shorthand? My secretary can’t.’ So I typed his letters every day at four o’clock and, in exchange, studied for free. It was brilliant.” The principal also asked her to go to evening classes to do the missing GCEs. Within a year, she’d won a prize and secured a scholarship for a second year.
It was there that she met engineer, inventor and entrepreneur James Dyson who was then at the start of his own creative path. Together, they decided to pursue further studies: she in graphic design at Wimbledon College of Art (where she graduated with distinction in illustration and graphic design), and he in product design. It was a partnership built on shared curiosity and creative thinking from the outset.
Lady Dyson’s practical design training, particularly in concepts, colour theory and printmaking, would later prove invaluable. “Byam Shaw taught you to really see, with your eyes and your hands. The exercises were intense, but they opened doors for me. My understanding of colour came from there.”
Throughout the years raising their children, she continued to draw and paint, often on the kitchen table, and held exhibitions with London galleries, such as the Albermarle Gallery in Mayfair. “It was always part of me,” she says. “And looking back at my early work, I still recognise myself in it. All those still-lifes I painted were part of the journey.”
The defining pivot in her creative career came in 1998 when she was looking for a contemporary rug for the family’s new Georgian London house and couldn’t find anything she liked. “Everything was antique, ethnic or fitted. I just wanted something modern and freestanding. There was nothing.”
On a whim, she walked into a small rug shop on the King’s Road. “I couldn’t find what I wanted and I was about to leave when the owner said, ‘Why don’t you do me a sketch? We can make it for you.’ ” Working with just 15 colours, she designed a simple rug, just to see how it would turn out. When it was delivered, the shop owner noticed her paintings around the house and offered her a chance to design more.
“At first, I thought, this will be easy – it’s just pattern, right?” she laughs. “But of course, it wasn’t. I had no idea about weaving, pile heights or what the materials could do.” She began to experiment with tufted and hand-knotted designs, quickly discovering that creativity needed to meet technical understanding.
Trips to Nepal followed, where she learned firsthand how rugs were made – knowledge she now considers essential. “You can’t design well if you don’t understand how it’s constructed. The early hand-knotted pieces were basic, partly because the knots per inch count we were using restricted us to using straight lines in the designs, but as I learned more, I pushed the boundaries.”
Eventually, she was offered a partnership in the business, and when her partner stepped away in 2010, she took it over completely. “By that time, I’d already insisted on getting a computer and trained someone to digitise my sketches. I wanted to be able to manipulate the designs properly, match colours and communicate with the weavers in Nepal efficiently.”
That design technician, Nichola, is still with her today. Their process is meticulous: Deirdre draws and colours the design by hand, using crayons and carefully selected wool ‘poms’ to match hues. Nichola digitises it faithfully, matching the colours precisely on screen. “It’s like paint-by-numbers, but for master weavers,” Deirdre explains. “Every design is made to measure. The sample we exhibit is just the starting point.”
With over 5000 shades now available within both wool and silk, demonstrated with coloured ‘poms’, Dyson’s palette is vast, but her restraint is intentional. “You don’t need many colours in a carpet – but you need the right ones. And if a client brings in their curtains or sofa fabric, we can match them exactly.”
Deirdre Dyson unveils a fresh collection of stunning hand-knotted rugs each year, with the 2025 collection called ‘Light Play’. While at first the rugs were constructed using both hand-tufting and hand-knotting, now all pieces are hand-knotted and machine-tufted. Many rugs incorporate silk in the designs. A touch of silk allows light to interact with the surface in ways wool alone cannot, introducing highlights that enhance Deirdre’s signature play with depth, shadow and movement. This helps her designs transcend their two-dimensional nature, bringing a sculptural quality to otherwise flat surfaces.
The company’s two showcase galleries in the Chelsea Design Quarter in King’s Road, London and in central Paris have a very different clientele. “The London customers are very reserved and often won’t say a word. If they like something, they might come back and ask a question, or they’ll just leave without a word.
“In Paris it’s the opposite – people stop at the window, open the door and immediately say, “Wow! How long have you been here?” They start talking right away, and we have great conversations. It becomes a whole experience. I also get fantastic press coverage in French magazines, although the sales are more consistent in London.”
The Dyson Foundation, for which Deirdre is a trustee, reflects James and Deirdre Dyson’s mutual support of art, design and technology education. The foundation plays a vital role in global education, especially in promoting engineering in schools. A highlight is the James Dyson Award, where students are recognised for innovative design solutions, with winners receiving a personal phone call from James Dyson himself. The Foundation also created the Dyson Institute, now a fully accredited university offering engineering degrees. For many, it leads straight into a job at Dyson. Deirdre attends meetings and sees the impact first-hand – something she describes as both inspiring and emotional.
The couple’s shared commitment to design and education extends to Bath, where James Dyson developed his first vacuum cleaner in a coachhouse just outside the city. Today, their philanthropic reach includes support for the University of Bath, Bath Rugby and the Dyson Cancer Centre at the Royal United Hospitals Bath.
Deirdre explains that for both of them the drive behind the Foundation’s work stems from their own beginnings where creative teaching just wasn’t encouraged. “James had a similar experience to me. He was very good with his hands and making things, and he went to a good public school in Norfolk, but his headmaster wrote on his final report, ‘I’m sure James will be good at something, somehow, somewhere – though I’m not quite sure what.’ He left school with no clear idea of what he wanted to do, apart from knowing that he liked painting. So, he decided to go to art college, but without a vision for the future.”
Deirdre’s life, like her work, has been a layering of textures and colours: fine art, design, family and entrepreneurship. She sees no contradiction between her paintings and her rugs. “It’s all part of the same creative process. You move through stages, but you remain connected to them. Even a sketch I’ve kept from my student days – it still feels like me.”
And when asked whether it is colour or form that drives her work, she doesn’t hesitate: “Colour. Always. But it’s the discipline behind it that makes it sing.”
deirdredyson.com; jamesdysonfoundation.com
