Erased Heritage

With their balance of intricate traditional patterns and modern minimalist flourishes, Jan Kath rugs and carpets are widely popular with design enthusiasts and reflect his own desire to bring comfort, warmth and character back into the contemporary home. "Nobody feels comfortable in clinically styled apartments with highly polished concrete floors," he has said of his efforts. 

World-renowned for his eclectic and colorful designs as well as his adherence to ancient hand-knotting techniques, Kath’s rugs have graced the floors of celebrity homes, museums and properties occupied by luxury brands including Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Co. 

Born in 1972 in the vibrant city of Ruhr in Northern Germany, Kath was introduced to the world of carpets when he was just a baby. Three generations of his family had worked as antique carpet suppliers — a trade that Kath initially rejected. However, when he was traveling in his early twenties, fate interceded. He was getting close to running out of money while he was still on the road and ran into one of his father’s carpet suppliers in Kathmandu, Nepal, and asked for a job working in his carpet factory there. He spent several years working alongside local carpet weavers, learning the ins and outs of how the carpets were handmade. Kath eventually took over the factory and began creating his own designs. 

Inspired both by his travels through Asia and the Middle East, as well as by the beauty of his home in Ruhr, Kath’s carpets quickly developed a signature style. Spurning a formal education in design, his purely intuitive technique often rejects the rules of design to celebrate imperfect patterns, eclectic colors and unconventional motifs. His carpets are loomed in India, Morocco, Nepal, Thailand and Turkey. 

Kath’s designs, which have been likened to antique and vintage Persian rugs over the years, are all created using centuries-old hand-knotting techniques. Working with local creators at his plant in Kathmandu, Kath aims to preserve ancient carpet-making practices by applying them to modern works of art, creating unique pieces imbued with the character of their makers. 

Jan Kath has received numerous awards, such as the Carpet Design Award and the Red Dot Design Award, and his carpets have garnered international renown. His works have been exhibited at the Art Museum Riga Bourse in Latvia, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, and elsewhere. In 2014, he partnered with friend Jenni Finlay to open a showroom, Finlay and Kath Inc., in Vancouver, Canada.

Find Jan Kath carpets and rugs on 1stDibs.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”

Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.

Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.

It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.

Good antique rugs and vintage rugs have made their way into homes across the globe, becoming fixtures used for comfort, prayer and self-expression, so choosing the right area rug is officially a universal endeavor.

In modern usage, “carpet” typically denotes a wall-to-wall floor cushioning that is fixed to the floor. Rugs, on the other hand, are designed to cover a specific area and can easily be moved to new locations. However, the terms are interchangeable in many parts of the world, and, in the end, it won’t matter what you decide to call it.

It’s well known that a timeless Persian rug or vintage Turkish rug can warm any interior, but there are lots of other styles of antique rugs to choose from when you're endeavoring to introduce fresh colors and textures to a bedroom or living room.

Moroccan Berber rugs are not all about pattern. In fact, some of the most striking examples are nearly monochrome. But what these rugs lack in complexity, they make up for in brilliant color and subtle variation. Moroccan-style interiors can be mesmerizing — a sitting room of this type might feature a Moroccan rug, carved wooden screens and a tapestry hung behind the sofa.

Handwoven kilim rugs, known for their wealth of rich colors and unique weaving tradition, are pileless: Whereas the Beni Ourain rugs of Morocco can be described as dense with a thick surface or pile, an authentic kilim rug is thin and flat. (The term “kilim” is Turkish in origin, but this type of textile artistry is practiced all across the Balkans, throughout the Arab world and elsewhere.) 

When it comes to eye-catching floor coverings, the distinctive “medallion” pattern of Oushak rugs has two types of rounded shapes alternating against a rich red or blue background created with natural dyes, while the elaborate “star” pattern involves large eight-pointed shapes in diagonal rows alternating with diamonds.  

If you’re looking for something unexpected, find a runner rug that pops in your hallway or on your stairs. Dig for dazzling geometric patterns in our inventory of mid-century modern rugs and carpets, which includes works designed by the likes of Swedish textile masters Märta Måås-Fjetterström, Marianne Richter and other artisans. 

Carpets and rugs have been around for thousands of years. Prehistoric humans turned to animal skin, wool and fur to craft simple fabrics to soften hard terrain. A 2016 study suggests that "cave lions" were hunted for exactly this purpose, and that decorating your cave with their pelts may have conferred strength and prestige. Although many of these early textiles are still in existence, tracing their precise origins is difficult. Carpets quickly became such a valuable trade commodity that the weavings could easily travel far from their places of origin. 

The oldest known carpet was found in southern Siberia. (It may have traveled there from Persepolis in Iran.) For the flat-weave floor rugs crafted by Native Americans, cotton was the primary material before sheep’s wool was introduced in the 16th century. In Europe, carpet-making was fundamental to folk art, and Asian carpets imported to European countries were at one time considered a precious luxury and not intended to remain permanently on the floor. 

With the variety of area rugs and carpets rolled out for you on 1stDibs — a collection that includes traditional, modern, minimalist rugs and other coverings of all kinds — things will be looking up whenever you’re looking down.