130 SUMMER
Study and retreat As with every room setting, rugs proved to be essential elements in the 49th edition of the prestigious annual design event Kips Bay Decorator Show House New York. Denna Jones reports
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130 SUMMER
Study and retreat As with every room setting, rugs proved to be essential elements in the 49th edition of the prestigious annual design event Kips Bay Decorator Show House New York. Denna Jones reports
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I S SUE 131
‘Save the best for last’ is common advice, but at the 2024 Kips Bay Decorator Show House, ‘best’ began just behind the front door of the show’s five-storey townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The house featured twentyfour designers, and show sponsors included Bokara Rug and Rug & Kilim.
The entrance featured Reframed Foyer—‘a love letter to the art of carpet making’—a collaboration between Bennett Leifer Interiors and carpet company Edward Fields. The Edward Fields archive provided inspiration for the design of the hand-tufted wool, silk and lurex carpet—awash in metallicinspired neutral shades—which covered two landings and six shallow steps. The team stretched the definition of ‘wall-to-wall’ by cloaking the walls with carpet to create a comprehensive ‘soft cell’ room. Stair treads coordinated with vertical abstract patterns in the wall carpet to create a trompe l’oeil effect. Other tufted surfaces included a pixelpatterned mirror frame and signage.
Kit Kemp Design Studio referenced ‘A Room of One’s Own’—an oft-quoted essay by English writer Virginia Woolf—for A Dining Room of One’s Own. Kemp’s signature moreis-more style of layered patterns, colours and textures covered all surfaces. The room’s Deer Leap Blue rug was a hand-hooked Kit Kemp x Annie Selke collaboration.
Kemp’s stature in the design industry demonstrates she has conquered an aspect
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01 A Dining Room of One’s Own by Kit Kemp Design Studio. Rug by Kit Kemp x Annie Selke 02 Reframed Foyer by Bennett Leifer Interiors x Edward Fields. Carpet by Bennett Leifer x Edward Fields 03 The Virtue of Curiosity by Benjamin Vandiver Interiors. Rug by Sacco Carpet
