A Transatlantic Collaboration
Kit Kemp has teamed up with Annie Selke to produce a rug collection that’s available in the UK at Andrew Martin. The collaboration is a meeting of minds: the pair share a deep love of textiles, with the Massachusetts-based Annie Selke overseeing her eponymous mini-empire of companies selling soft furnishings, curtains, wallcovering and clothing, while Kit Kemp’s interior design style is well known for its sumptuous, layered approach to fabrics and rugs, which can be admired via her work at Firmdale Hotels and latterly at her own design studio.
The collection draws on three destinations, Barbados, New York and the UK. Bright colour looks sensational under the Barbadian sun, and rugs such as ‘Lily Pad’ (pictured top) with its graphic, retro-inspired design evoking leaves on water, is as bold as it gets; while the informal aesthetic of the Bloomsbury Group is evoked in ‘Jelly Roll’ (above left), which takes influence from a rug in artist Duncan Grant’s studio at Charleston in East Sussex.
Different techniques have been used across the collection. The folky ‘Eternal Spring’ (above centre) is a hand-made jute rug inspired by traditional backstrap loom-weaving, while ‘Dew Pond’ (above right) uses ‘micro-hooked’ wool for a subtle texture and durability.
