Blogs

The New York Rug Show is a premier, forward-looking gathering and I generally go every year.

Several trends were important. First, the top-of-the-line producers are working hard to make less expensive rugs while maintaining premium quality.

Every design project has a budget and every one has a space to enhance.

Some spaces are allotted more money. Some have to get by.

Many jobs have a room that needs a nice design touch, but has little budget. For these floors many designers have relied on fabricated carpets to define the space and balance the colors in the room. A nice neutral cut to fit the room and nicely bound or basted has turned many low-budget rooms into great spaces.

Here was the problem. The designer and her client picked out a sisal/wool carpet. The mill delivered it on a 13' 2" roll.

But the coverage area required a carpet 17' 10" x 19' 11". The mill "declined" to seam two pieces together. In fact, the mill rep said the product was not meant to be seamed.

A pattern on the carpet complicated the task even more. If two pieces could be seamed together, the pattern would have to match exactly or the whole project would fail.

Bob Ford has the attitude that if something can be done with carpet, he can do it and do it well.

Several years ago Beni Ourain rugs were quite popular in the U.S. These were made by nomadic tribes in the Atlas Mountains spanning Morocco and Algeria. Raw white wool patterned with black or gray stripes or swatches with a long nap made them easily recognizable. We featured a small piece about Beni Ourains here.

We get a lot of questions about the best way to place a rug. 

Here are some suggestions with a few principles that you might find helpful.

Defining an Area

Rugs can corral a seating area in the middle of a large space and make gathering there more intimate.

Custom rugs can give a space a unique identity.

Tampa designer Mandy Vallowe showed Bob Ford a picture of a rug in a magazine. She thought the rug would work nicely in a condominium she's working on for a client on Harbor Island.

It's like a jigsaw puzzle, only the pieces are improvised straight-sided shapes. Bob developed a sketch for the project.

When Your Goal Is More Decoration than Durability

Faux silk in rugs performs a great service to designers: it provides the wonderful sheen and highlighting of real silk at a fraction of the cost. But nothing is free. Faux silk comes with some risks and disadvantages.

My goal is to point these out to you so that you don't get surprised by an irate client with a rug with durability issues.

If you don't know already, Addison/Dicus & Bailey is out of both showrooms daily showing rugs in the rooms where designers think they will work. There's only one way to find out if a rug is going to work and that's to lay it out in the room.

Here's a short video of a rug showing for designer, Janna Walker of JDW Designs.

2019 is well underway and we have a lot of new rugs in our showrooms. It's not like we planned to have new rugs for the New Year, but it's turned out that way.

In no particular order here is a sampling. Check out the rugs that have new design and/or construction techniques.

Enjoy!

We love working with you in 2018 and look forward to working with you in2019!