An Artist's Eye

One need only look around the showroom of Carini Lang to understand the far-flung interests of Joe Carini. "I have a lot of them. It's hard for me to walk down the street and not have an idea for a rug. But my favorite source of inspiration is being in my store, working with my clients. Two people can see the same carpet differently. Looking at it from their perspective helps me with later designs," says Carini, who spent time at Odegard before setting up shop.

Since then, Carini has been busy transforming his own watercolors into highly coveted RugMark-certified silk and wool tufted rugs. Lena Delta maps the course of the eponymous Russian river and its tributaries. The radiating circles of Vibra and the zigzagging of Faux Bois are experiences in 1970's movement and coloration. For Dots, Carini took a very uptown dotted swiss and bluntly cropped the dots' tops for a downtown edge. And Stripe, at 300 knots per inch, is a simple geometric.

To help clients select a palette, Carini provides a strip of numbered color blocks. "When color, pattern, and texture all work together," he says, "people respond." 646-613-0497; carinilang.com. circle 446