AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

As a young boy, Adan Jes­samy grew up with “old-school” par­ents who pri­ori­tised aca­d­e­mics over the arts. To­day, he is build­ing a suc­cess­ful rug-mak­ing busi­ness, while show­ing and en­cour­ag­ing oth­ers to pur­sue their cre­ative pas­sions.

With a de­gree in bi­ol­o­gy and bio­chem­istry, Jes­samy now works a tra­di­tion­al nine-to-five job as a cler­i­cal as­sis­tant. But he want­ed more—a greater sense of ful­fil­ment, and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to earn some ex­tra in­come.

“At the be­gin­ning of 2023, I just stum­bled up­on a video on YouTube of a girl mak­ing rugs. And, yeah, that was it there. From there, I just said, ‘You know what? I’m go­ing to buy all the equip­ment.’ And this looked like some­thing I could do. And I start­ed im­me­di­ate­ly,” Jes­samy told Guardian Me­dia.

By watch­ing on­line videos, Jes­samy taught him­self every­thing, even­tu­al­ly re­al­is­ing that his rugs sur­passed those he had learned from in de­sign, tech­nique, and qual­i­ty. He be­came con­vinced that he wasn’t just mak­ing rugs; he was cre­at­ing tex­tile art.

And with just one so­cial me­dia post of him mak­ing a rug, his busi­ness, RugITT 868, be­came a hit, gen­er­at­ing many views, likes, and or­ders.

“If I start a rug, what I do is, I’ll give my­self at least 10 days to fin­ish a rug. So I may have a cou­ple of or­ders, but I kind of hold them off a lit­tle bit. I’ll let peo­ple know, be­cause it takes such a long time—a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time,” he said.

He con­tin­ues to re­ceive re­quests for lo­go-brand­ed rugs, home dé­cor pieces, and even cus­tom car mats—but it’s his ani­me-in­spired de­signs that re­main the most pop­u­lar.

Af­ter a full work­day, Jes­samy takes a short rest be­fore div­ing in­to rug-mak­ing for his busi­ness, of­ten work­ing well in­to the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing.

With a tuft­ing gun in hand, and fo­cus and pa­tience guid­ing every move­ment, Jes­samy care­ful­ly brings each rug de­sign to life, thread by thread. But not every de­sign pro­posed by a cus­tomer can be turned in­to a rug with­out some re­design.

“Some­times a lot of peo­ple come with a lot of crazy ideas. And now, you can’t make a rug out of just any­thing. You need to have it in a cer­tain for­mat—lots of bold lines, clear colour dis­tinc­tions and sep­a­ra­tions.”

As RugITT 868 con­tin­ues to thrive, Jes­samy finds a sense of sat­is­fac­tion and pur­pose in hav­ing a cre­ative out­let while run­ning his busi­ness. He en­cour­ages oth­er young peo­ple to pur­sue their cre­ative dreams, but al­so to pri­ori­tise their aca­d­e­mics.

“Fol­low the aca­d­e­mics first. I think that would be the wise thing to do. And then, if you want to pur­sue some­thing on the side, go for it. And don’t re­al­ly wor­ry about what any­body else has to say about it.”