Kelly Wearstler Rug 9 X 12

When Kelly Wearstler started her namesake business, in 1995, she worked alone out of her Los Angeles apartment. “Sixteen-hour days, seven days a week,” she recalls. “The studio has truly grown organically over the years.”

​​Wearstler’s work in the early 2000s was classified as the new Hollywood Regency — much to her dismay. It’s easy to understand her reaction. Although the glam quotient of her projects jibed with the style, her aesthetic was far more sophisticated than that of the many wannabe designers who were merely peddling Dorothy Draper and William Haines retreads.

Today, Wearstler presides over a behemoth, many-tentacled enterprise. One part is involved with residential interior design for such high-profile clients as Cameron Diaz, Gwen Stefani and Ben Stiller. There is also a team dedicated to hospitality design, including for projects like the recently opened Proper Hotels’ properties — developed by her husband, Brad Korzen’s Kor Group — in Austin and Santa Monica. Then, there are her ever-expanding product designs in a multitude of categories: In 2019, she added new carpets and runners to her collection with The Rug Company, collaborated with Georg Jensen on a tableware and centerpiece collection and partnered with Ann Sacks on a line of encaustic tiles and with Lee Jofa on a line of fabrics and wallcoverings. Each season sees fresh additions to Wearstler’s lighting lines, as well.

Wearstler is drawn to furniture that is boldly scaled and, often, graphically patterned, mixing such pieces with one-off creations by artist designers like Roland Mellan, Lindsey Adelman, Katie Stout, Misha Kahn, Entler Studios, Susan for Susan and Anton Alvarez.

“For me, it is the power of the line,” says Wearstler. “I think it goes back to my love for graphic design. There is so much strength and beauty in the simple line. Pair this with geometries and artisanal fabrication, beautiful materiality and you have exceptional pieces of furniture. In essence, furniture as sculpture.”

Of course, no matter how distinct in style, both the early and most recent work springs from the same impulse. Wearstler’s signature approach to interiors has been described as marching right up to “over the top” then taking a step back. In that sense, Wearstler is doing what she has always done, albeit in a more confident way, with bigger budgets, a larger proportion of important furnishings and art and more of her own designs. The Hollywood glamour that got her noticed decades ago toed the same elusive line of good taste that her blend of blue-chip pieces, Memphis Group furniture and challenging works by emerging artist-designers does today.

Find Kelly Wearstler furniture 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.