The fame of the finely-crafted decorative rugs from the city of Tabriz can be traced back to at least the 16th century when the Safavid court commissioned these extraordinary carpets for use in palaces, holy sites, and tombs. The famed Ardebil Carpet, long housed in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, is considered the finest extant example of 16th century Tabriz carpet weaving.
Swedish Inspired
A.W.N. Pugin (1812-1852) was the architect and designer who, more than anyone, gave the Gothic Revival its principles. Trained by his father, the architectural draughtsman Augustus Charles Pugin, he was designing professionally by fifteen, when he was commissioned to produce a Gothic chalice for George IV.
Portrait by an unidentified painter, about 1840. National Portrait Gallery, London; the painting is out of copyright, via Wikimedia Commons.
May Morris (1862-1938) was an English embroiderer, designer, jeweller and editor, and the younger daughter of William Morris and Jane Morris. Born Mary Morris at Red House in Bexleyheath, she learned to embroider from her mother and her aunt Bessie Burden, and enrolled at the National Art Training School, later the Royal College of Art, in 1878.
Photograph by the Bain News Service. Library of Congress (lccn.loc.gov/2014683895), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
(October 28th, 1888 – October 18th, 1967)
Stephane Boudin was born on October 28, 1888, and was a French interior designer. Boudin was famously known for his design work when he joined Maison Jansen’s firm, first as the son of Jansen’s tassels and trim supplier. Boudin would soon become one of the era’s most celebrated decorators, enhancing Jansen’s reputation for historically researched chic interiors still further.
AB Elsa Gullberg Textilier och Inredning was founded in Stockholm in 1927, the first firm of its kind in Sweden. Its shop and workshop stood near Hamngatsbacken in a functionalist building by the architect Birger Borgström.
Pierre Olofsson (1921-1996) was a Swedish painter, printmaker and sculptor, and the most consistent of the concrete artists of his generation. Born in Paris and raised in Stockholm, he trained at Otte Sköld's painting school and at the Royal Institute of Art.
Photograph from Svenskt konstnärslexikon (Allhem). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Pinton has woven at Felletin, beside Aubusson in the old county of the Marche, since 1867, and is now the last workshop carrying on the tapestry tradition of that region. The firm began with two brothers who went to Paris as rug traders and representatives for Maison Bournaret, a weaving manufactory at Felletin, and in time took over the weaving themselves.