Monochrome minimalism

A black and white palette is always in style. COVER Editor Lucy Upward discovers monochrome highlights on show at COVER Curates

A monochrome palette, comprising deep blacks, mid-tone greys and fresh whites and creams creates its own form of minimalism. Here the focus is on form and function rather than an interplay of colour. It is the patterns, mark-making, shapes and textures that speak volumes. 

Black and white is also a combination that never we never tire of, whether expressed in checks, stripes or irregular patterns. Each season has its monochrome highlights and for COVER Curates there are plenty of those from which to choose.

Choudhary Exports’ Enigma collection rug uses a monochrome palette to to express the idea of brushstrokes on a canvas.

Hand-knotted in wool and silk, the atmospheric Shadow by Knots Rugs illustrates refracted light with grey smudged lines that also look like brush marks. 

In Kirkit’s new additions to the Moon and Galaxy collections, the dark areas are created with goat hair and the off-white is hemp, materials that give them a unique aesthetic. The designs, like Beyond, have an ethereal, spiritual quality to them.

Baneh kilim Illusion designed by Soheila Shayegan for Zollanvari looks like a shimmering landscape in black and white. 

More landscapes from the Landscape collection by Rezas, which is inspired by the many and varied, changing surfaces of planet earth. The designs offer minimal, stylised interpretations of some of the most magical and breathtaking locations in the world.  

Top Floor’s Chill hand-tufted rug is a minimalist textural design with two versions each based on an aerial view of a rectangular frozen pool surrounded by freshly raked snow. 

This Scandinavian collection rug by Rug & Kilim has a cool, calm palette of subtle whites and creams, to allow the pattern to do the talking.