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Rugs and carpets reflect a global heritage of textiles and weaving, such as ornately patterned Persian and Indian designs. If you want a creative design that stands out, area rugs or carpets can provide layers of color. Ultimately, however, if you want to be sure the rug you’re buying is truly an antique, it is best to consult an expert. The three main components that determine the quality of a piece are the dyes, the wool and the number of knots per square inch. So, how can you tell if a rug is high quality or vintage?
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Key furniture pieces can be placed on the rug or just the legs, such as with furniture like coffee tables in your living room. Vintage rugs can ground a space, and arranging furniture around them creates a measured focal point. Carpet piles materials can vary from wool and cotton to silk and synthetic fibers, and the purpose of a floor covering can range from reducing noise to offering a place to sit. Area rugs can be seasonal or changed with other decorative objects to refresh an interior. Finding the Right More Carpets for YouĪntique, new and vintage area rugs and carpets are a simple way to add warmth and style to any space. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects - and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair - crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich - and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface avoidance of ornament.”Įarly practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.įollowers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs - many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances - both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism.
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