Magic Carpet Ride

Edited by Karen D. Singh -- Interior Design, 3/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Two significant things happened to one New York man in September 1935: He got married and opened a rug and carpet company. Since then, the Edward Fields logo—its wavy lines reminiscent of Edward Gorey—has come to represent elegant interiors. Taken together, the designs are a magical ride through the past seven decades.

High notes from the 1960's and '70's include Marion Dorn's swank Fred and Ginger, which traces the graceful footsteps of Astaire and Rogers. Burt Groedel's Cherokee takes sculpted and contoured carpet pile to a new height. Introduced in the late '70's, the Deep, designed by Leon Barmache, is so timeless that Barneys New York recently ordered a few for in-house use.

Raymond Loewy's Picnic Blanket is a marriage of mod pattern and Norman Rockwell innocence. Cosmos by William Raiser appears, up close, like brushstrokes from a painting by Claude Monet. When the proprietors of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus hired John Elmo Associates to design their residence in Washington, D.C., Raiser's design became the main attraction in the living room.

On the traditional end of the spectrum, Fields has manufactured rugs for the grandest of Park Avenue grandes dames: Designing a rug for Brooke Astor, Van Day Truex used spots to match those that might later appear, courtesy of her three dogs. Perhaps the greatest residential commissions were for the White House. Edward Fields redid the rugs in the Diplomatic Room during the Kennedy administration, the East Room for the Clinton administration, and the Oval Office under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

232 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022; 212-310-0400; edwardfields.com. circle 353

Clockwise from top right: The Deep is a Leon Barmache rug from the 1970's. Designing a room in Washington, D.C., in 1964, John Elmo Associates specified the Cosmos rug by William Raiser. The rug is hand-tufted wool. Burt Groedel's Cherokee, a rug from the late '60's, combines sculpted and contoured pile. Raymond Loewy's Picnic Blanket dates from the early '50's.

Clockwise from top right: A Marion Dorn rug from the 1960's, Fred and Ginger pays homage to Astaire and Rogers. Van Day Truex designed Terra for Brooke Astor in the late '40's. One of the company's rugs graced the Oval Office during the Reagan administration. The custom design is hand-tufted wool. Raiser also designed Ebb Tide. For a company ad, the carpet was photographed in a room by Interior Design Hall of Fame member Kevin McNamara.