Tom Dixon Gets Down

Mark McMenamin -- Interior Design, 2/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

 

His guerrilla aesthetic and rebel attitude have engendered a swarm of flamboyantly progressive furnishings. But not until now has he turned his gaze to the floor. Fortunately, Tom Dixon has an experienced partner calling him to the carpet. The Rug Company, already the floor-covering facilitator for designs stars from Arad to Zeisel, is now launching the straightforwardly named series, Tom Dixon for the Rug Company.

Dixon's muse for the four-pattern debut is decidedly old-school, TV test patterns from the analog era. Aggressive geometrics repeat in varied colors, dancing against black grounds. The irony of choosing electronic imagery, only to have it hand-knotted in Tibetan wool by artisans in Nepal, wasn't lost on Dixon. "Working on a computer screen, it's impossible to predict the effect of light and shade on the pile," he adds. "The joy and surprise is in unrolling the samples for the first time and seeing your idea, which you have previously experienced only in a pixellated 15-inch format, transformed into a massive, luminous plane of color."

 

The patterns have self-explanatory names: Beam, Step, Tile, Tube. Sizes are 6 by 9 feet, 8 by 10, and 9 by 12 in addition to custom dimensions. Coordinating cushions come in handwoven wool. 800-644-3963; therugcompany.info. circle 436