emma gardner design To Introduce Rug Designs At ICFF

Furniture World Magazine

emma gardner design, llc, makers of contemporary heirloom quality rugs, will debut six new designs at the 2008 International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF). Designs will include three new hand-knotted rugs, Palace, Fish Tail, and Whole Baby Fish, as well as UnderSea, a new color and construction of Gardner’s popular Chinese River rug. Two hand-tufted rugs, Istanbul and Constantinople, will also be introduced. ICFF will take place at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City on May 17 - 20, 2008. The rugs will be available at showrooms and through custom order starting this summer. “The rugs we are introducing are all very different from each other, as were my inspirations for them,” said Emma C. Gardner, chief designer and principal of emma gardner design, llc. “One of the common themes in the collection was my interest in reinventing and having fun with some classic design types - framed damask, for example, in Constantinople and Istanbul, and the playful version of a more archetypal layout with Palace. It was a fulfilling creative process which I hope will inspire designers and consumers to be bold and creative in their interior spaces.” Released in 2007 as a hand-tufted wool rug, Chinese River incorporates butterflies in flight with Asian-inspired elements such as leaves, water, spirals and flowers. For 2008, the rug will be introduced in all silk and in the colorway UnderSea, a soft blend of blues and greens. “We were very excited by the idea of an all silk rug,” says Gardner. “I was playing with the UnderSea color palate and Chinese River seemed like the perfect design for it. Many elements in the design seemed to change in the course of my experimentation: the lines in the river came out, and the field got broken up into flowy blocks so there was an opportunity to put similar colors next to each other and allow the properties of the silk to shine through even with no wool to serve as a counterpoint. It gives the whole thing a water color-like blending effect.” Chinese River is hand-knotted of Chinese Silk with 100 knots per square inch and a 5 mm. pile. The rug will retail at $200 per square foot and is available in standard and custom sizing and colors. The new hand-knotted Fishtail and Whole Baby Fish both feature stylized fish motifs. “I wanted to capture the iridescence and shimmer of fish scales,” adds Gardner. “Though the fish are represented quite literally, I wanted the scales to be the focus and stand out enough to be almost abstract. I used all silk strips at the edge of each scale, then a blend of wool and silk inside the fish design and all wool as the background to give that sense of how fish scales flash with color as they move through water.” The third hand-knotted rug design is Palace. The design is inspired by vintage carpets and tiling with symmetrical floral and abstract patterns. “I love the intricacy of these old-fashioned designs but wanted to create my own shapes to make a more modern and playful rug that could just as easily go with contemporary furnishings as with a transitional design,” says Gardner. Fishtail, Whole Baby Fish, and Palace are all hand-knotted Chinese Silk and Tibetan wool constructed with 100 knots per square inch and a 5 mm. pile. Fishtail is offered in Chocolate Fossil, Whole Baby Fish in Acid, and Palace comes in Sandalwood and Midnight. These rugs will retail at $150 per square foot and are available in standard and custom sizing and colors. In the hand-tufted category, emma gardner design will introduce Istanbul and Constantinople, inspired by Turkish design elements such as damasks and pottery, with ornate repeat patterns and dramatic color combinations. “I was creating various framed damask designs for another project and began to consider versions of those designs as rugs,” comments Gardner. “I'd been inspired by Turkish pottery I saw at an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London last summer, so it was a nice chance to finally combine that inspiration with some interesting new colors. We experimented with flat versus a varied pile on both of these designs, and decided without a doubt that the latter was better, giving the rugs a sculpted look that allows the design and the colors to stand out crisply. I used some of the new palette colors we're bringing out this year, including some true blues, grey blues and antiques roses and mauves.” Istanbul and Constantinople are constructed with New Zealand wool with a combination of 8 and 10 mm. piles. Istanbul is offered in Midnight, Robin’s Egg and Dusk, and Constantinople in China Blue, Night Forest, Mocha and Larimar. These rugs will retail at $50 per square foot and are available in standard and custom sizing and colors. emma gardner design, llc is a design and development company that produces fine contemporary interior products for use in residential, hospitality and contract spaces. Based in Litchfield, Connecticut, the company’s products are available at showrooms throughout the United States. emma gardner design, llc is a proud member of the RUGMARK Foundation, a global non-profit organization working to end child labor. Honors in 2007 included an Interior Design Best of Year Merit Award for Jewels in Sand and IIDEX/Neocon Innovation Awards for Bamboo Blossoms and Flowers on Water. For more information visit emmagardnerdesign.com.