I’ve just been introduced to Altoon Sultan’s wonderful hooked “ruglets”. Created as art for the wall, they’re an extension of her work as a painter and contribute to her ongoing study of nature and landscape, abstraction, and the work of artists that inspire her. Click here for her paintings and here for her ruglets.
Visit the website of Macan Tidur Textiles for a glossy, well-curated “look book” of textiles from Sumatra, Java, Bali and beyond. Above, a sarong from South Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Via Susi Johnston.
Here’s a pretty eye-opening story about the economic realities of traditional carpet weaving in Morocco.
– It seems like there must be some importer out there who would be interested in working in a beneficial way with the collective of female weavers featured in the article…
Seema Krish’s debut collection is called Bombay Bliss and includes six patterns made in a range of fibers and techniques. There are pillows and throws — and fabric by the yard is coming next.
Via Interior Desisgn magazine’s “Market Tabloid” issue, 10/31/09.
The New York Times blog “The Moment” has a post on new carpets by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby for The Rug Company. Fun and happy, but sophisticated too.
A “William Morris-inspired” wool / viscose carpet by Sanderson, sold through the British company John Lewis.
Segueing from my previous post, artist Joanne Mattera’s 10/26/09 blog entry offers an interesting commentary on the limitations and implications of defining artists within subcategories — like “fiber artist”. Her entry also includes examples of several artists-who-happen-to-work-with-textiles-as-a-medium, including Polly Apfelbaum. A detail from her piece “Funkytown” is shown above.
Debra Smith uses vintage textiles to create compositions that are sewn and quilted to collage-like effect. By framing her pieces for the wall she also helps blur the art/craft distinction that often leaves fabrics in a lesser camp.
If you like Smith you might also appreciate the work of Leah Evans.
…A European fabric company with some beautiful patterns, worth keeping an eye on in the months ahead.
I find decorative arts of all kinds can have amazing power to re-shape, dislodge, and entirely shock my sense of time as an historical progression of the “old” leading to the “new”. The carpet above (shown in close-up) is a case in point. According to dealer Sandra Whitman it was made in China between 1723 and 1735. That means this very “new” looking carpet (replete with a simplified color palette, abstracted open field and streamlined border) was sitting in China decades before the U.S. Declaration of Independence or the French Revolution. That unwires my brain a bit.
