Numero Neuf

The story of Art Deco is incomplete without the contributions of Paule Leleu. The daughter of celebrated French designer Jules Leleu, Paule carved out her niche in designing beautiful Western European rugs. A rich use of color and bold geometric patterns made Leleu’s rugs a quintessential representation of Art Deco style. 

Leleu was born in 1906 into a family with a love of design. Her grandfather operated a painting business in Paris, which her father and uncle transformed into an interior design company. They grew it into an influential design studio, which was among the first to pivot to Art Deco when it became popular after World War I. The Leleu design studio won the top prize at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts.

French designer Ivan da Silva Bruhns initially helmed the rug department of the Leleu firm. When he left the company in 1936, Paule Leleu took over. She expanded on da Silva Bruhns’s success and soon produced many award-winning designs. 

Leleu instilled the Art Deco style into her hand-knotted rugs that featured simple linear motifs and decorative flourishes. In the 1940s, she began using floral patterns. Leleu always created her designs with her family company’s furniture in mind. Like that furniture, her later carpets also tended towards the minimalism of mid-century modern style.

Across her career as the chief rug designer at the Leleu design house, Paule Leleu is credited with more than 500 rug designs. The stunning statement pieces remain classics for today’s homes. 

On 1stDibs, find Paule Leleu rugs and carpets as well as other home accents.

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.