Couristan Turns 100: Celebrating a Legacy in Timeless Design

To mark 100 years, Georgia Couri and Larry Mahurter speak to COVER’s Libbi Kettle, reflecting on a timeline of design with a skilful eye on both modern and future styles

A century is no small marker. In 2026, Couristan celebrates 100 years in in the contract/ hospitality and residential business for carpets and rugs. It is a milestone that speaks not just to longevity but to an ability to evolve within an industry that has continually redefined itself.

The company was founded in New York in 1926 as an importer of Persian rugs. Still family-owned, it has moved through economic downturns, global manufacturing shifts and seismic changes in consumer taste.

For Georgia Couri, who officially joined her family’s business four years ago and is now director of business development, the milestone is as much about the future as the history.

‘I think there is a pretty strong responsibility to not just celebrate the past but honour it with what you do in the future,’ she says.

A Living Archive presented at tise

That mentality shaped the anniversary celebrations at The International Surface Event (tise) back in January. What might have been a standard cocktail reception became something much more reflective.

Senior Vice President of Marketing Larry Mahurter, who has been with Couristan since 1991, describes transforming the booth into a living archive. ‘We had a giant historical timeline on our back wall with fourteen monitors,’ he explains, ‘Each monitor had a short video on each decade.’

The installation became, in his words, ‘Almost a historical background of the company’.

Design Continuity and Evolution

The timeline traced pivotal shifts, from early trading foundations to large-scale global manufacturing partnerships.

A significant shift was the relocation of Axminster loom production from Ireland to China in 2006, reflecting wider changes across the manufacturing of the textile industry.

For Couristan, adaptation has often meant geographical reinvention without losing design identity.

That balance between consistency and evolution is best illustrated by the machine made Kashimar collection. Introduced in the mid-20th century, it was designed to replicate the look of hand knotted Persian rugs at a more accessible price point.

While colour palettes have shifted over time, its formation has remained constant. ‘We never changed the construction of it or the fibre content at all,’ Mahurter says. ‘What changed was the colours used throughout the decades.’

In recent years, the company has recalibrated the relationship between machine made and handmade. Couri acknowledges that machine made once dominated the company’s focus. Handmade, she suggests, ‘wasn’t forgotten’, but it wasn’t central.

Now, the strategy is more balanced, combining chunky hand knotted rugs with machine made wool collections that are carefully hand finished, an approach that Mahurter describes as necessary ‘synergy’.

‘You must have those handmade looks,’ he says, noting that design elements can move fluidly between constructions to serve different price points.

The Rise of Customisation

Customisation has become another defining evolution. A growing share of residential business comes from broadloom cut to specific dimensions.

‘I think people like being able to say this was custom-sized for me,’ Couri explains.

Along with personalisation comes speed. Mahurter points to ‘the time restraints and getting it down to even forty-eight hours to produce’ as a crucial operational shift in response to contemporary expectations.

The customer demographic is shifting. Once primarily serving a fifty-five-plus market, Couristan is now seeing stronger engagement from thirty-five to fifty-five-year-olds and younger buyers entering the category.

Couri believes they are not abandoning traditional design language but reshaping it. ‘They like the traditional designs,’ she says, ‘but in an updated way-whether it’s the colours or maybe it’s distressed a bit.’

Mahurter sums it up succinctly: ‘These are not your grandparents’ rugs. These are your rugs.’

Through manufacturing migrations, aesthetic cycles, operational change and even Covid, Couri believes the company’s resilience comes down to ‘the people of the company. I hope that just like we’ve done in the last 100 years,’ she says, ‘we will continue to adapt.

Words by Libbi Kettle