La Manufacture Cogolin embraces its Art Deco origins

French heritage brand La Manufacture Cogolin’s two new collections take inspiration from Art Deco, the style of the period of its founding.

French heritage brand La Manufacture Cogolin’s two new collections take inspiration from Art Deco, the style of the period of its founding.

Founded during the height of the period we now know as Art Deco, French rug manufacturer and premier heritage brand Cogolin celebrates its centenary in 2024. The almost century-old company has collaborated with celebrated architects, artists, and designers over the years including André Arbus, Jules Leleu and Jean-Michel Frank. Inspiration for two of Cogolin’s newest rug collections emerged from the motifs of Art Deco and the designs of Arbus.

Bryant Park, The Jazz Collection, La Manufacture Cogolin

The Jazz Age collection of six rugs reflects the vibrant syncopation of Art Deco architecture in New York, while the André Arbus collection of five rugs reflects the Neoclassical Revival style seen most prominently in the luxurious interiors of Art Deco-era luxury ocean liners whose structural design inspired the period’s vogue for Streamline Moderne in architectural, industrial and product design.

Matignon, Arbus Collection, La Manufacture Cogolin

André Arbus is arguably the most emblematic designer of the Neoclassical Revival style. Common motifs of the style include symmetrical scrolls, classical columns, swagged drapery and rope patterns as seen in the border of the Arbus Cogolin rug Nossi-bé (Crête de Coq). The zenith of the two overlapping styles appeared in the interior decoration of the French luxury liner SS Normandie which made its maiden voyage to New York in 1935. SS Normandie’s interior included rugs by Cogolin, designs by Arbus and Art Deco décor such as the ship’s Egyptian-inspired Cafe Grill reflective of the era’s fascination with ‘exotic’ archaeological finds of the early twentieth century like Tutankhamun’s tomb and Mayan ruins in Central America.

Nossi-bé, Arbus Collection, La Manufacture Cogolin

The Arbus rug collection was unveiled in November 2019 as a collaboration between La Manufacture Cogolin and Fondation André Arbus. Designs were selected from the André Arbus archives housed at Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. The collection is hand-knotted in wool in Nepal in a palette of colours reflective of the 1940s, while the Jazz Age collection is woven on the company’s historic Jacquard looms in wool, cotton and jute with flourishes of gold and silver lurex. Both collections are redolent of preeminent craftsmanship plus French je ne sais quoi—that indefinable quality of appreciably pleasurable distinction.

Wall Street (detail), The Jazz Collection, La Manufacture Cogolin

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