With more than 450 established and emerging design brands showing everything from ball chain curtains to door pull handles and portable reading lamps, the International Contemporary Furniture Festival can feel a bit overwhelming—and it only seems to get bigger every year. But if you want to get a sense of where contemporary design is headed, there’s still no better place to go than New York’s Javits Center. As sprawling as the campus is—and at 3.3 million square feet, it is—it is still North America’s leading design fair for a good reason. Where else can you sink into an armless Ligne Roset sofa or switch on a handmade paper lamp? Below, six rugs that caught our eye.
1
JD Staron’s ode to French Art Deco
The Polish weaver and designer Jakub Staron got his start restoring antique carpets while studying in New York. So when he set out to weave Tasse—a faithful reproduction of a French Art Deco piece—he knew he was up to the challenge. (Why do it? ‘Because I can,’ he said, laughing. It’s no surprise that he won this year’s ICFF Editors Award in the Carpet & Flooring category.) His six-piece Trocadéro Collection, hand-knotted in wool, oozes 1920s Parisian glamour.
2
Warp & Weft’s abstract take on medallions
The New York-based brand Warp & Weft marked its 25th anniversary with the nine-piece Crossroads collection, inspired by founder Michael Mandapati’s forty-year journey with rug making. Hand-knotted in Nepal and Swiss washed, the rugs, four of which debuted in New York, put a fresh spin on ancient motifs: Dig fuses wool, silk and linen to evoke the shape of a medallion on an antique Senneh rug, while Ascendo, an amethyst stunner in wool and silk, riffs on the crossroads theme with its interplay of gold-coloured lines.
3
Heather Chontos’s vibrant LAYERED rugs
The Swedish rug brand LAYERED looked to Heather Chontos for New York-born artist’s first rug collection, launching in June. The three pieces, all crafted from New Zealand wool, reference various periods in Chontos’s life, such as Collage, which began as a composition of ‘torn film posters and pages from old French magazines’, the company says. A variety of dyeing and hand-knotting techniques were used to follow the vibrant designs, which take between five and ten days to produce. ‘They captured not just the colour but the light,’ Chontos says. ‘They feel almost theatrical.’
4
Rug & Kilim’s Leleu-inspired rug
On the stand of family-owned New York firm Rug & Kilim, most striking was its Art Deco collection, which felt as faithful to the movement as anything Persian founder Jahanshah Nazmiyal stocks in his Long Island City, Queens, showroom. One wool rug, No. 29082, stood out for its seafoam-coloured pattern—based on French furniture designer Jules Leleu’s ornately streamlined designs—with subtle gold accents and a high-low texture that adds depth.
5
JOV’s fashion-forward vision
Perhaps no brand was having as much fun at ICFF as JOV, the Belgian upstart founded by Jo Vandenbussche in 2001. Now run by his stylish son, Gilles, and creative director Annelore Naeyaert, who is also his partner in life, JOV takes a playful approach to rug making that’s informed by a love of fashion. Recent collaborations include M-SHWY, Studio Mary Lennox’s mind-bending top view of an oyster mushroom in New Zealand wool and shiny Tencel Lyocell, and Rotterdam-based designer Laurids Gallée’s Sussurro collection, which features three cloud-shaped carpets in New Zealand wool set against a dreamy silk-and-wool skyscape. All rugs are handmade in Portugal.
6
Rhyme’s Studio’s ode to ancient Irish castles
It was hard to pick a favourite from Rhyme Studio’s OM Series II, Báinín and Castle, which debuted at the New York and Dublin brand’s booth at ICFF. The company’s founder and designer Claire McGovern insists she’s ‘not always wedded to an Irish story’; however, it’s clear she had the country’s ancient castles on the brain when she began sketching the series. Made of Irish wool, the cutout on top of the Keep rug ‘is a signature architectural detail’; the sun motif ‘was just an opportunity to put in some colour’. Each piece takes between eight and twelve weeks to produce in Ireland.
Written by Jill Krasny
