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.

I just spent too much time looking through almost every thumbnail, close-up and alternate view on Lapchi’s website, a company specializing in “handwoven carpets in silk and wool”. It’s almost impossible to get a real sense of the character, quality, or even the pattern of carpets through the computer screen but I do like Lapchi’s Palampore design, above. In the carmelian color shown it’s rich and romantic without being too traditional. In lighter colorways it has an almost Arts and Crafts feel, as if adapted from a William Morris pattern book.

I’m very interested in the historical pairing of non-Western (particularly “tribal”) art with contemporary interiors. It’s a match-up that’s been going on for quite awhile now and reaches back to the personal collections of Picasso and Matisse, the use of  the “primitive” in Art Deco, etc. The photo above appears within an article in Modern Magazine (Fall 2009) about Florence Knoll’s 1960’s interiors for the headquarters of CBS. Here we see the contemporary / tribal combination again, in this case with a framed textile serving as counterpoint to the sleek sofas and steel-framed tables that fill the space. I wonder how Knoll selected the piece and what it represented to her — I also wonder what the textile is exactly. Is it Indian? Is it a South American mola?

The website for Zena Kruzick Tribal Art features a diverse selection of non-Western textiles that includes this early 20th century “body cloth” from Nagaland India (detail shot above). The website also has a short bibliography of recommended textile-related books as well as a great long list of links to other tribal art dealers, sites I’ll be happily exploring in the days ahead.