Art deco carpets - Design Notes - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, March, 2002 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Decorative arts of the art deco period, sometimes known as the machine age, are characterized by angular lines and an absence of ornament that give them a streamlined appearance. Carpets woven from the mid-1920s through the 1930s reflect this aesthetic. Because many of the leading designers of furniture, lighting devices, and other furnishings undertook commissions for entire rooms, or indeed, whole houses, offices, or other public spaces, they were frequently called upon to design upholstery fabrics, curtains, and carpets, which served to unify a room.

Two French designers of the early art deco period Jean Michel Frank and Emile Jacques Ruhlmann can be credited with some of the most innovative carpets of the age. Carpets associated with Frank's designs for interiors were highly regarded, and he received commissions from around the world. His clients included such well-known figures as the couturier Elsa Schiaparelli of France and Templeton Crocker of San Francisco. Frank collaborated with some of the most progressive artists of the day including Alberto and Diego Giacometti and Salvador Dali. For his early carpets he advocated neutral colors in muted tones of brown, gray, and green, woven in costly materials such as silk, which gave the carpets the brilliant luster that is a hallmark of textiles made during this period. Later, his carpets became more colorful, particularly when he began working with the surrealist painters.

Ruhlmann was one of the most important interior designers in Paris in the l920s. Many of his carpet designs are known through colored renderings of rooms he created for the various exhibitions held in Paris during that decade. Although department stores in Paris were responsible for disseminating the art deco aesthetic to a wide audience, most of Ruhlmann's carpet designs, like Franks, were specifically made for his clients.

A group of carpets associated with Frank and Ruhlmann is being reproduced by Saxony Carpet Company of New York City They are woven in Nepal using wool from New Zealand and silk from China. Among the designs are Frank's Fantasy I, known to have been woven for the drawing room of Nelson Rockefellers apartment in New York City in the mid-930s, and Swirl, designed by Ruhlmann for the state bedroom in the Salon des Artistes Decorateurs in 1928.

Saxony Carpet Company has showrooms throughout the country open to the trade only To learn where these are located, readers should telephone 212-755-7100 or consult the company's Web site (www.saxcarpet.com).