Tufted Tribute

Mark McMenamin and Athena Waligore -- Interior Design, 2/1/2013 2:00:00 AM

There’s a time for everything—especially if it’s timeless. Tai Ping director of design and creative development Yasmina Benazzou pays deference to avant-garde structures, mid-century textiles, and Bauhaus weavings in Epoch, a 17-pattern synthesis of geometry and abstraction. Informed by the angles and contours of modernist icons, the rugs are hand-tufted in a variety of fibers; black and gray serve as prevailing neutrals.

The random stripes of Dissonance I reference 20th-century textile legend Sonia Delaunay, in a blend of wool, wool lace, and dull silk. Architecture is the muse of Archetype I, a network of interrupted lines in wool lace on a dull-silk background. Wool and flax intermingle in Time I, its rectangular grid subtly streaked in blue. Diamonds arise from raised wool triangles in Paradigm I, a dynamic take on traditional harlequin motifs. Similarly angular forms also dictate Omission I, a broken zigzag with a textured wool background and accents of dull silk. But the source turns natural in Parody I, a large-scale python skin imagined in wool and dull silk. All sizes are custom.