Rugs, Carpets, and Decorating

Landry & Arcari teamed up with New England Home magazine to announce the winners of the third annual 5 UNDER 40 event.  This competition, juried by a panel of top designers in the region, aims to identify the most promising young New England design talent from a range of disciplines – architecture, interior, furniture, home products, and accessories.

After their selection the winners met with Jerry Arcari, who presented the concepts of rug design.  Rug design is not simply a matter of color.  The rug designers may manipulate material, texture, and weave to produce the desired effect.

On the basis of the information from Jerry Arcari, the five designer set to create their designs.  After about two weeks, they were ready to meet with a Landry  & Arcari staff  rug designer, to solidify designs.  Working with each designer separately, Landry & Arcari helped them select the appropriate colors from a large pool of colors swatches of wool and silk.  Landry & Arcari also assisted in the selection of textural options: incorporating silk or hemp in addition to wool; cutting the pile to variable heights;  adjusting the weave by using looped weave or soumak stitch in addition to cut pile.  Overall this process transformed the ideas into a form that Landry & Arcari could send to the weavers in Nepal to the create the rugs.

For the next three months the weavers in Kathmandu transformed the designs into actual rugs.

 

Above: Weaving the winner's designs in Kathmandu, Nepal

The culmination of this process is the auctioning of these rugs on September 13 at cocktail party at the Atrium next to Landry & Arcari’s Boston Back Bay showroom.  The proceeds of the auction benefit Barakat, a Cambridge, Massachusetts,  non-profit organization, that promotes educational opportunities for women and children in central and south Asia.

For anyone who is reading this blog before  September 13and is interested in bidding on any of these rugs,  pre-bididng is available online.  Tickets to the cocktail party and the completion of the auction are also available online before the event.

 

Here are the five rugs:

 

Designer: John Day; A photo of flowers on a rocky hillside inspired this design.  This design emphasizes texture by having each design element in a different height of pile.  The silk fuschia pile is the highest, the light grey is the lowest.  The size is 5' x 8'.

 

Designer: Asher Dunn; The different color yarns are intermixed on irregular boundaries. The contrast among colors is enhanced by having each color with different mix of wool and silk.  The size is 4' x 8'.

 

Designer: Amy Hirsch; The designer created the three-dimensional effect by emphasizing contrast in tone, weave, and material.  The background is ivory soumak-weave wool; the design is brown cut-pile silk.  The size is 5' x 7'9".

 

Designer: Liz Stiving Nichols; Twenty-five shades of color and gentle curves achieve the subtle organic look of this rug.  For further interest, the design element is placed on a naturally colored hemp background.  Size is 5' x 8'.

Designer: Kelly Taylor; This design plays with color and texture to create a very modern look. The darker grey color has a unique texture from alternating rows of cut pile and looped pile.  The size is 3'1" x 8'.

 

The 5 Under 40 program spotlights young designers in New England, encourages innovative rug design, and supports the education of girls in Pakistan.

Landry & Arcari is proud to be presenting sponsor of New England Home magazine’s “5 Under 40” awards. An all-star panel of regional designers selects five of the best young designers in the New England Area.

Each of the five winners then designs a rug to be hand-woven on Landry & Arcari’s GoodWeave-certified looms in Nepal. Landry & Arcari has extensive experience weaving custom rugs in Nepal for its customers.

On September 15, there will be an awards dinner to honor the winners and to display the completed rugs. At the awards dinner there will be an auction of the rugs. The proceeds will go to the Barakat, Inc., to fund scholarships for girls in Pakistan. Last year’s auction raised over $9,000 for this cause.

The winners of the 2011 contest will be announced at a special reception on April 14, 2011, and will be profiled in the September/October issue on New England Home.

For more information about the event, see http://www.nehomemag.com/ms/5-under-40/home.

See below for the rugs designed by last year’s winners.  We will show the rugs from this year's winners in a later blog.

Rug design by Hansy Better Barazza, Studio Luz Architects

Rug design by Stephanie Horowitz, ZeroEnergy Design

Rug design by Meichi Peng, Meichi Peng Design Studio

 

Rug design by Patrick Planeta, Planeta Basque Boston

 

Rug design by Quentin Kelley, Infusion Furniture

We are always experimenting with new designs in our Nepalese line of rugs. One of the most interesting is a design that we have called “Monet”, because we can interpret the design as water lily pads and buds floating on water. This is in tribute to Claude Monet’s famous series of painting on this theme.

Monet, Blue, 8 feet x 10 feet

As many of our contemporary designs, this rug design was inspired by a fabric. We adjusted the scale of the motif to make the design more dramatic. We have noticed a trend in contemporary rugs towards larger and more dramatic scales.

The fabric that inspired the rug design

To create a shimmering look of the water around the lilies we played with the background texture. The “water” effect is created by alternating a row of silk pile with a row of looped café-au-lait colored wool. The lilies themselves are wool and mohair blend pile. Since the silk pile does not stay up uniformly, the light brown peaks through unevenly. This creates a wonderful misty aura in rug background.

Closeup showing alternating rows of silk pile and wool loops

The latest shipment of rugs from our production has just arrived from Nepal. It included four different sizes of our Monet, Blue, design. As other rugs in our collection, we are happy to weave custom sizes or adjust the colors and design to customer preferences. If you are in our area, check out examples of this beautiful rug in either of our showrooms, Boston and Salem, MA.

Monet, Blue, Tibetan  rug: detail of another view

In our most recent shipment from India, we have a good number of dhurrie (alternatively dhurry, durrie, and durry) rugs.  These flatwoven rugs are a traditional floor covering of India and Pakistan.  Although frequently  these are all-cotton, ours are wool on a cotton foundation.  The wool surface is better wearing and easier to maintain than that of cotton.

These rugs are especially woven for us.  Jeff Arcari in one of his visits to the Indian rug-weaving of Bhadohi worked out the color placements in the designs to make them especially appealing to our clientele.   He created six different color combinations.

 Designs of Landry & Arcari Dhurries

These rugs are products of a cottage industry.  A weaving  family will typically have three or four looms under tent cover outside of their homes.  The weaver propels a hand-propelled shuttle to weave the design.  In a number of ways this cottage weaving resembles the production of Harris Tweed in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

We have a large range of size of these designs as rugs and runner: 2’6” x 8’, 2’6” x 13’, 5’ x 8’, 9’ x 12’, and 10’ x 15’.  If we don’t have the exact size that you need, we can trim a rug or sew two or more rugs together.  We have made a stair runner from these dhurries.

With prices starting at $180 these rugs are a great buy.  They would look wonderful in a beach home or a casual room.

Ready for rugs that are unique, sensational and unlike any other that you’ve ever experienced?  We’re very excited about our newest collection of 100% recycled Sari Silk, which has just arrived from India.  These eco-friendly rugs are woven from 100% recycled silk; they are woven by hand and will energize your home’s interior in a way no other rug can. (A sari, the traditional garb of the women of India and neighboring countries, is an unstitched length of cloth that is draped over the body in various styles.)

This new, environmentally green, rug collection boasts beautifully blended tones and a unique striated design that is different from anything we’ve offered before. Take a peek at the pictures and come into either of our Landry & Arcari locations to explore the design possibilities these silk rugs can offer.  Let one of our design experts help you bring in the New Year with an updated look for your home!

A Sampling of the Vibrant Colors in Our Sari Silk Rugs

 

Shimmering Blue Sari Silk Rug: J25430, 4' 2" x 5' 10"

We have almost completed unpacking the rugs that Jeff Arcari bought on his buying trip to Pakistan, India, and Turkey.  The most recent batch that we unpacked had some very unusual and distinct rugs.  Each of these rugs uses variations in texture as in its design.  Part of the surface is pile, while the remainder is soumak weave. 

Soumak and Pile Textures

The soumak weaving technique consists of wrapping colored yarns over the warps of the carpet.  Since the soumak yarn is continuous rather than knotted and cut, it does not have “fuzz” that pile rugs have. 

In the rug below, the texture of the background soumak makes the cloak appear to float on the surface.

J25468, 4' 2" x 6' 0"

 

In the rug below, the colors are low contrast.  The design uses difference in texture as much as the differences in color. The design is inspired by Moroccan tribal rugs.

J25482, 9' 2" x 12' 0"

 

In this last example, the contrast is in both texture and color.  The black pile strikingly contrasts with the silver metalic soumak threads.

J25473, 6' 4" x 9' 7" and other sizes

Included among the carved paneling, antique stained glass windows, antique furniture, and other items that form a room in a Boston institution is a large and beautiful, but worn, rug.  The room and the rug have an interesting story.  From the 1920’s to the 1980’s the room paneling, the rug, and the other contents graced a financial office in New York City. In the 1980’s the room was dismantled and relocated to Boston.

The 18 x 28 foot rug in the room is a type known as Karaja, named after the village in far Northern Iran where it was woven.  Karaja rugs are similar in many ways to the better known Heriz rugs, but differ in structure.  By this time the rug was worn and repaired many times.  Our client requested Landry & Arcari to recreate this rug in the same size and design. 

Landry & Arcari arranged for a new rug to be woven in Northern Pakistan by Afghan Turkmen, who have been expert rug weavers for countless generations.   We documented the rug in photographs and computer renderings.  To provide the weavers with the colors, we matched the colors in the rugs with color samples.  The colors of the new rug, like those of the antique original, will be from indigo, madder, and other plant dyes.  The new rug will be sturdier than the original, even when it was new.  The weaving technique of the Turkmen creates a denser, firmer rug than that of the Karaja weavers.

We will be receiving pictures from all the stages in the creation of this rug.   We start off with dyeing, shown below.  We hope to post other pictures here as the rug takes form.

Matching the Colors

The Dye House

The Master Dyer

 

The Madder-Dyed Yarn

For many rugs being woven now, fabrics, rather than traditional rugs, are the inspiration for design.  We have recently had a wonderful example when clients brought in a sample of their upholstery.  The major decorative element of this fabric was a peacock.  The clients were interested in a 8 x 16 foot rug based on this peacock design. 

Eric, our graphics designer, created a rug incorporating images of four peacocks.  Then, he and the clients reviewed our inventory of hundreds of color swatches to select the colors to use in the rug being created. 

The next step was to test out the design in a sample. We then sent the rendering of the design and the codes of the selected colors to our weavers in Nepal.  Within six weeks an air package arrived from Nepal.  It contained a 2 x 2 foot sample of the design.  Our clients immediately came in to check the results.  We received an e-mail later in the day stating “we LOVE LOVE LOVE the rug” and placing an order for the full-size rug.  They also very kindly offered to let us photograph the rug in their house when it arrives.  When we do so, we will share the photograph on this blog.

 

The Inspiration: Upholstery Fabric

The Rendering: The Design of the Rug

The Strike-off: Woven 2' x 2' Sample of the Peacock Rug

J24351, 5' 5" X 8' 0", Hand-knotted in Turkey

 

Many of the rugs being woven today use traditional designs. Although Persian rugs form the most important source of the traditional designs, there are others.  One of the most intriguing sources are the three towns on oases on the old Great Silk Road.  Although we frequently refer to these designs as “Khotan”, all three towns, Khotan, Yarkand, and Kashgar wove rugs.  What makes these interesting is antiquity and complexity of design.  The desert climate has preserved rug fragments almost 2,000 years old.  Being in the major east-west trade route, Khotan designs reflect influences from Persia, China, and India.  Also, they add a local touch by frequently including pomegranates in the design.  The following blog article provides a nice summary of the history and rugs of this area: http://tea-and-carpets.blogspot.com/2010/11/khotan-carpets-and-lost-legacy-of-silk.html.

Below are images of some rugs in our inventory.  Some are close representations of Khotan designs, others show various degrees of influence.

J27968, 9' 0" x 11' 5", Hand-woven in Turkey

 

J24672, 8' 3" x 9' 7", Hand-woven in Pakistan

J21630, 4' 1" x 5' 1", Hand-woven in Turkey

J24353, 1' 10" x 11' 10", Hand-woven in Turkey

J24349, 4' 10" x 6' 10", Hand-woven in Turkey

J25149, 8' 0" x 9' 7", Hand-knotted in Turkey

One of the major benefits of creating custom rugs for our customers is that they bring a fresh eye to our designs.  One of our customers selected the design of our wool and silk Tahiti, Taupe, rug, but wanted it in green.  Coincidently, we had created a sample in green shades, but never got around to have room-size rugs woven in that color.  (We are always experimenting with new designs and colors.)  The customers loved this sample and asked us to weave it for them in a 9 x 12 foot size making some adjustments in the highlight shades.  It would be perfect for their Florida winter home.

The rug arrived this week by air from Nepal.  When we unpacked and opened the rug, we were immediately struck by its beauty.  We wondered why had not previously woven this rug for our own inventory.  The next day we placed an order for this design in three different sizes.  We are looking forward to seeing them here in about five months.

The surface of the rug is mostly Tibetan wool.  In the customer's rug, the blue and gold highlights (flower and leaf veins) are silk. In the sample, the blue highlights are wool.

Above: "Tahiti, Taupe"

Above: "Tahiti, Sage", 2 x 3 foot sample

Above: Custom-woven, 9 x 12 foot, Tahiti, Sage