Gesture Mimic Mindscape Rug

Mae Engelgeer’s deep love of textiles characterizes each and every one of the decorative rugs and tapestries she produces in her workshop. The Dutch designer explores how geometric forms can lend a complex and balanced feel to her works, and she creates vibrant combinations of color, pattern and texture so that each project yields a harmonious whole that is imbued with a rich sense of dimension. 

Engelgeer has enjoyed working with her hands since she was young. She studied textile design at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute, graduating in 2004. She spent some time working in fashion before enrolling at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam for postgraduate study in applied arts and textiles. 

While she knew she wanted to be a textile designer, Engeleer lacked a clear-cut path toward a career in the industry. She decided to forge her own way and developed a textile collection for TextielLab of the TextielMuseum. In 2013, she opened her own studio. 

Working in her own studio gave Engelgeer the freedom to experiment with her craft and with different textile traditions. While continuing to create minimalist but playful carpet designs, she has also expanded into related areas such as bedding, cushions and blankets. 

In addition to designing for her own studio collections, Engelgeer regularly collaborates with brands across the globe on a range of products. She has over the years partnered with companies such as cc-tapis, Ames, Honor and Kvadrat.

On 1stDibs, find Mae Engelgeer carpets, wall decorations and more.

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 The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics.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.

Whether you hang them behind your bed as a dazzling alternative to a headboard or over the sofa as a large-scale focal point in the living room, vintage tapestries can introduce an array of textures and colors to any space in your home.

Woven wall hangings haven’t consistently enjoyed the popularity or earned the highbrow status that other types of wall decorations have over the years, at least not since the 1970s, which was somewhat of a heyday for tapestries. Today, however, these tactile works of art are seeing a renaissance, as modern weavers are forging new paths in the medium while the demand for antique and vintage tapestries continues to grow.

“We are drawn to texture in environments, and we see tapestries as a subtle layer of soft ornament,” says Lauren Larson of the New York design duo Material Lust. Indeed, and a lot of opportunity comes along when decorating with this distinctive brand of soft ornament.

Think of wall hangings as paintings created by hand with fabric instead of oil or watercolors. If you’re not simply securing your treasure to a wall with nails, pushpins or Velcro, tapestries can be stretched over a frame, used to create a canopy in a cozy living-room corner, hung from a rod or placed inside a shadowbox. And because this kind of textile art is hundreds of years old, options abound with respect to subjects and designs.

For richly detailed depictions of landscapes and garden scenes, look to antique Chinese tapestries and Japanese tapestries. Aubusson tapestries are ornate wall hangings manufactured in central France that are also characterized by romantic portrayals of nature. For weavers of mid-century modern tapestries, as well as those working in textile arts today, the styles and subject matter are too numerous to mention, with artists exploring experimental shapes, bold colors and provocative abstract designs.

Antique, new and vintage tapestries can make a room feel warm and welcoming — find yours on 1stDibs now.