We had a party to reveal the rug design chosen last spring by our panel of competition judges.
Congratulations to Malia Jensen!
Her winning design was revealed, handwoven into a stunning 8 x 10 wool rug by Rug Star.
After the big reveal, Bruce Guenther made some remarks about the judges’ selection process:
“…how will this become the heart of the room? How will this become a textile with silk and wool instead of a drawing or print on a piece of paper? It emerged very quickly that we could make a rug that was like other rugs we were surrounded with in this wonderful atelier, or we could pick something that wasn’t a rug we knew, wasn’t a footfall we’d had, and so when we came to The Reflection of Light and Shadow—Malia’s piece–it was not a rug we’d seen. But it was an experience we had all had. And so with a knowing nod to Magritte in art history, and a wink at the irony of someone like Ed Ruscha for the last 50 years, Malia invented something coherent with—and it was a blind test, we had no names attached—the rug suddenly took on a meaning when the name was revealed, after we had gone through 3 rounds of votes and came to choose this rug. That design, actually [points to sketch] but it became this rug, which is the magic of Rug Star and Christiane’s vision. It opened the door to something that is essential in the way all of us experience things: from our grandmother’s rug, as a child crawling on the floor, to an adult in front of the fireplace, to a parent leading the world, it is this magical moment in which the room, the floor, and the light in the room becomes a place. And it’s confusion of—á la Magritte—of what is real and what is seen, what you know and what you experience—like the concept of home—surprised us and it became something entirely different.
This is an editioned rug. There are going to be 10 of them in the world. It is going to join the ranks of artist-designed rugs across two centuries, from the 18th century to the present. Serious artists, the best artists of their age, have been designing textiles, tapestries, carpets and cloth, from Boucher to Sonia Delaunay to Salvador Dalí, Christopher Wool, Malia Jensen.”
