In a space that is sophisticated and minimal, eclectic and well traveled, neat and organized, and mindful of itself; a space that loves the pure essence of music and aims to capture the cleanest sound, sits the perfect braided carpet.
A unique rectangular piece that contains color, but is strengthened by black, dark browns, and neutrals brings together these elements to ground a listening room that is both soft and masculine at the same time. It’s texture, warm and full of memory, cultivates a sense of home.
Ries | Hayes Interior Design Studio really nailed it on this one.
Braided carpets are a category of rugs which are rich with history. This American cultural object of necessity has over time become an appreciated woven art form, and the search for unique and interesting period pieces is an ongoing one. Here’s some braided rugs that we find to be quite wonderful.
When you’re ready to find home, you know who to call.
The studio-office at L’Ermitage de Pompadour is the Fontainebleau home of collector Charles de Noailles, French author and patron of the arts.
The office was decorated by Georges Geffroy (1903/05–1971), who is aptly described by Mitch Owens as “the most glamorous interior designer you’ve never heard of.”
Owens writes in an article in Arch Digest, “In his youth, the Paris-born Geffroy had worked in fashion, turning out hats for Paul Poiret and Redfern and designing clothes at Jean Patou. By the 1930s, though, he had begun decorating, turning out everything from suave fashion-house salons for Jean Piguet and Marcel Rochas to striking theater sets, such as a celebrated production of Sheridan’s School for Scandal, to glamorous, history-inflected rooms for celebrated socialites.”
The pictured studio gives us historical reference for the design and its uses as we present to you a matching mid 19th Century Aubusson carpet from our inventory.
Stock ID 19734 French Aubusson 10’0″ x 16’0″ circa 1840
The extremely fine woven mid-19th century French Aubusson rug was designed by Sallandrouze, who were amongst the wealthiest and most illustrious families in the carpet, rug and tapestry industry in Aubusson.
The piece is rich with silk and gilt-metal thread. An irregular lattice delineates lozenge shaped spaces and is centered on a particularly large and elaborate sub sectioned ivory motif. Each tall panel is filled with arabesques organized in a cruciform pattern. The narrow, off-white check-mark border discreetly frames the whole.
Rudolf Stingel is an artist who focuses on exploring the relationship between art, space, and the viewer. He wants his installations to be interactive; to evoke emotion and depth of thought.
Palazzo Grassi is divided into 40 rooms and has 5,000 square meters of exhibition floor. The 2013 the show by Rudolf Stingel was a solo exhibition in which Stingel aimed to create an experience which draws upon the history of the city of Venice via a space which was built in the 16th century and passed through the hands of many noble families before being purchased in 2005 for use as a space to exhibit art.
His synthetic rendition of antique carpet is fabricated in larger than life scale, and covers every surface of every room in the building, playing with the various scales of his contemporary artworks, which stand out from the hues of the backdrop via their grey, white, and black palette in the same way that the openings of the building frame views of the city.
The exhibit touches on Sigmund Freud’s early 20th Century Viennese study with the exhibit of art suggesting presences that are ‘buried’ in memory, and removed experiences that thrive again. The carpet design itself replicates one of the carpets on the floor of Sigmund Freud’s study.
Alana Jones-Mann, baker and designer, is well known for decorating cakes that resemble shag rugs – but her love for textiles and patterns shines through on the occasional treat which resembles other woven arts (such as antique rugs or cultural tapestries).
Mann’s attention to detail when creating these delicacies is noteworthy – replicating the length or thickness or direction of woven threads in the same manner expressed in the original artwork.
Here are a few of our favorites.
Antique Persian Rug Each individually piped dot of buttercream in this artists rendition of a classic Persian design was kept low and compact to reflect the nature of the rug’s pile.
Vintage Moroccan Rug Here Mann left the top of the cake blank to play off the elongated shape of the runner she was representing. Note the somewhat longer effect of the piped icing – to reflect the pile length common in Moroccan rugs.
Antique Moroccan Rug While Mann did not share a reference photo for this cake, we are able to compare it in style to one in our own inventory. Her skill at taking the most important elements of a busy design to incorporate into a cake sized pattern is evident.
Shag Just a few of the many playful cakes that capture the spirit of the 1970s shag style rugs via color and free flowing form.
Natural Fiber Flatweave One of a series of rug cakes decorated for a spread in Elle Decor representing their selection of the season’s best rugs.
Inspired by Mexico Mann talks about how growing up close to Mexico allowed the traditions and art to be a major inspiration to her. Here she pays tribute to that culture with her master craft by representing Oaxacan embroidery and Otomi patterns from Hidalgo in the sweetest way possible.
Bargello Needlepoint Inspired Bargello needlework is a type of embroidery laid in mathematical patterns to create motifs. These patterns are usually tight, busy, and colorful. Head over to Mann’s instagram page to see the trippy effect that happens when you spin one of these cakes.
Danish Arts & Crafts A tribute to the folk arts of Danmark, which also feels very much like a patchwork quilt.
Silk pile of Asymmetric Knots with Gold Metal Thread Brocading
Inscribed: “For Palace of Harmony usage only”
Most of the silk and metal thread rugs, ostensibly, according to their inscriptions, made for the Imperial palaces in the Forbidden City, display five writhing, scaly dragons, one central and full faced, the others more in profile in the corners, all executed in knotted silk pile on flat-woven gold grounds. This one, in perfect condition, shows a meditating Buddha with an enormous flaming halo, seated in a Lotus Position, between stipple shaded rocky mounds displaying irises/ peonies. Above is an umbrella signifying royalty, and scattered about are cloud bands, cloud knots and precious objects including: a cord knot, vase, wheel and scroll (?). At the bottom of the field is a scalloped and frothy sea with curling surf and droplets of foam. The usual stylized mountain rising from the waves is absent, replaced by a wave peak. Out of the sea climbs a vine supporting the Buddha’s lotus seat. The Buddha holds some sort of fruit, perhaps a citron or pomegranate, in his left hand, with the other lowered in the position of Calling the Earth to Witness. He is crowned and wears a double jeweled collar with a pendant ornament. His chest is exposed, but otherwise he is robed. The top knot on his head (urna) is consistent with the usual Buddha iconography.
This rug looks to be taken directly from a Buddhist thangka hanging scroll. It was clearly designed as a wall-hanging, and displays none of the usual symmetries of even the most luxurious Chinese dragon silks. There are the remains of hanging loops on the upper plain-weave end band. The main red border shows tilted flowers somewhere between chrysanthemums and peonies, connected by leafy arabesques. The central border shows a T-fret pattern with simple knot corners.
The originally bright gold ground has tarnished to an attractive brownish tone. The metal thread is composed in the usual Chinese manner: with gold leaf adhered to a paper substrate and then wrapped around a silk core. Metal thread without a silk core tends to break and cannot be woven smoothly. The silk pattern stands in relief against the metal thread ground much as in Persian Souf technique rugs. The combination of silk pile and metal ground is found on antique Kashgar carpets from Xinjiang, but the use of the technique in Peking seems to be a circa 1900 innovation. The weave is medium and extremely even.
A stunning and easygoing Persian formal garden rug with neutral tones, which successfully represents elements of earlier and more elaborate antique garden carpets by use of specific design elements.
The field is segmented by one vertical channel and two horizontal ones which break up the garden into six sections of framed flowers and trees. At the intersection of these pathways we find circular floral cartouches which are representative of the house or gazebo often found in earlier representations of the garden carpet.
All in all a strong piece of work that pays tribute to the intricacies of garden carpets past.
To view this rug on our website please click here.
Weft:cotton,off-white,Z-4-S,winder plied, quite irregular;2 shots alternating; wefts thick and soft;
Pile:wool,Z-4;
Knot: PL/0 degrees warp depression/horiz. 6 x vertical 5 = 30 knots per square inch; knots somewhat irregular, some quite thin; [check for T knots along edges]
Sides: two cords each of two body warps, inner directly weft-attached; figure eight sparsely weft yarn wrapped;
Weft/knot ratio: 60/40 wefts predominant.
Remarks:
This is another variant on the popular Mandarin nine lion dog carpet. The polychrome cloud wreath has exuberant, almost Baroque volutes at the four cardinal points. The intermediary wreath sections were in field tones and have faded, making the composition rather hard to discern: the wreath would have been more salient before the changes to the long, curved, intermediate sections.
The dominant, dark blue lion dog appears at the top of the medallion and has a wide, particularly expressive face, complete with character creases and a canine snout. The dog has real personality and individuality, unlike most of the animals in similar carpets. The main dog is alert and lively, with curved and slightly droopy ears. All the dogs have light colored forepaws and small over pelts. The creatures are well spaced and not crowded in the medallion. The protected (protégé) dog is particularly small. The main dog seems to have no parallels among published carpets and were any to appear, an attribution to the same workshop should be considered.
#18830 NingXia 15’0″ x 15’3″ circa 1770
The corners of the field employ double peony arabesques forming simplified “heart” points at the right angles. The development here is much more schematic than l8830 and need not indicate the same workshop of origin. Sprays of tree peonies, butterflies, leafy twigs, fractional tendrils and grassy clusters are spotted throughout the now buff field.
The dark blue peony main border is notable for the rare diagonal corner palmettes from which emanate foliate sprays in both directions in order to make a perfectly symmetric turn. A bold T-fret inner border in salmon and dark blue has neat T’s in three corners and a single hook in one. This is a certain indicator, if one is still needed, that no scale paper cartoons were available to the weavers. Specifically, there was no formal illustration of how to make a fret border turn a corner.
#18355 NingXia 13’6″ x 13’10” circa 1750
As with our other examples, this nine dog main hall carpet was probably woven to the order of a successful Mandarin administrator. Each of our large lion dog carpets seem to originate in a different shop, although 20853 and l8355 may be more clearly related than the others. The extreme technical uniformity across the entire local industry deprives us of any unique idiosyncrasies and hence pattern is the sole evidence for differentiation. One must also keep in mind that the same shop evolved over time, producing different carpets for different clients, changing the design pool when useful and implying a rotating work staff.
The field design on this top condition antique Peking (Beijing) carpet is adapted from silk brocade textiles.
The beige field displays a taupe-rust allover pattern of grape leaves and short, curled arabesque segments accented by coiled, archaic navy dragons and tiny rosettes. The dragons center lightly defines eight lobed medallions.
The central dragon and its encircling double medallion are somewhat larger than the others. The dragons are in a 17th century Ningxia style and ultimately depend on ancient archetypes on bronzes and ceramics.
The medallions are arranged in a 2-3-2-3-2-3-2 layout. The pattern stops just at the border frame and does not pass under it.
The ivory main border alternates ecru stencil-style lotus palmettes with bi-tonal medium blue and navy vine leaves, with attached tendrils. The plain outer border is in a rusty taupe shade.
There is light carving throughout to accentuate the pattern. The foundation is all cotton, and the Tibetan wool pile is of excellent quality. The handle is relatively pliable, and the texture is thick and meaty. This carpet has no repairs and is in top condition.
This carpet bears the partially illegible label of the Anglo … Carpet Company. On an all wool foundation, with double wefts, it is coarsely symmetrically knotted in three-ply wool with a pile about ½ inch deep. As is the case with the overwhelming majority of English 30’s Art Deco carpets, there is no border. The ivory ground displays diagonals with giant red spots and black/ivory scale patterns. The pattern is geometric, abstract and hard-edged, with no hint of floral or other realistic elements. However, the large dots have a mobility and seem to drift across the carpet. There is nothing static about the layout, rather a strong sense of diagonal motion.
Marion Dorn (1899-1964), an American by birth, was active in Britain between the wars and worked with, among others, the Wilton Royal Carpet Factory in the late 1920’s. She was not known to have collaborated with the Anglo … Carpet Company, however, hence the Dorn attribution is only speculative. The carpet is certainly in her style and no other English designer of the period was so strongly graphic. The strong abstract pattern is broadly similar to, but more mobile than, the black and white carpets she designed for Claridge’s Hotel c. 1935. If the carpet is from another (now unknown) artist, it is certainly of high decorative quality.
The condition is excellent, and all finishes are intact. There are no repairs and it is completely original.
This carpet is in amazingly good condition with only minimal repairs which have blended in well with the original fabric. Unlike many pieces of that period and type, this is a relatively oblong carpet, whereas it is more likely to encounter square formats woven to fit the rooms of contemporary residences.
The field is a soft golden sage centered by a complex ivory quatrefoil medallion. The periphery of which is formed by acanthus arabesques and scrolls. Within is a circular floral wreath enclosed by four square open knots. At the center is a bead and reel circle enclosing a laurel wreath which in turn centers an 8-petal motif.
At the four cardinal points is an urn on a stand. The style is neoclassical: a shaded blue amphora with large angular handles in yellow. This could be construed as an ormolu mounted porcelain. At the top and bottom, there is a further elaboration of the stand: a tapestry woven rug with a multicolored fringe is partially visible covering a table.
Connecting the urns are colorful garlands of flowers in the same style as the central wreath. Just outside the garlands are baskets of fruits and flowers. The corners of the field are further emphasized by bold arabesques twisting and curving into the open field along the sides. There are additional multicolored swags connecting the troupe l’oeil tapestry stand covers to the corner arabesques. The whole effect is extremely vivid and strong, more masculine than the softer, less active pieces usually encountered from this period.
The border system is narrow and is a troupe l’oeil moulding with “X” style ribbon clasps around a ribbed band as was the case with all the best Aubusson work, however this piece was clearly a special order. The design is unique; and the quality of the dyes, materials, and execution is high.
Antique Rug Studio 