Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1547304
IZZY NGUYEN-RAEL 108 F or nearly 40 years, London's Christopher Farr has treated rug making as an art form. Farr, an artist and designer, founded his namesake rug company in 1988 with business partner Matthew Bourne, and it soon became known for its collaborations with painters, architects, and fashion designers. Christopher Farr also has a long-running partnership with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, turning designs from the Bauhaus weavers' archive into rugs. Among them is a rug based on the ark panels that Anni Albers designed for Dallas' Temple Emanu-El in 1957. The newest collaborator is Texas-bred designer Sara Story, whose Hill Country rug collection takes inspiration from the landscape she loves. Born in Japan, Story grew up in Singapore and Houston, where she graduated from Memorial High School. She founded her New York firm in 2003 and has since built an international practice, as chronicled in her Rizzoli monograph, The Art of Home (2023). This year, she was again named to Architectural Digest's AD100. But her heart belongs to SK Ranch, the modernist retreat in the Hill Country outside Austin that she built with Lake | Flato and that landed in AD in 2014. She has served on the board of Ballroom Marfa, and she runs an artist residency in Texas. Rugs on the Range By Rebecca Sherman. Photography Weston Wells. London rug maker Christopher Farr teams with Sara Story on Hill Country, a collection inspired by her family's Texas ranch. The collection was photographed by Weston Wells at her family's ranch, amid rolling pastures and grazing horses. Hand-knotted in wool and silk, the made-to-order rugs feature three designs (Grid, Landscape, and Spider), each in four colorways named for the terrain: Texas Sky, Limestone, Texas Rose, and Cacti. The checks of Grid recall a saddle blanket; in the catalog, that's exactly how one brown-and-white pinto wears it, ambling through a field with the rug draped across its back. Landscape stacks bold blocks of color into broad stripes, while the browns and blacks of Limestone look right at home against the ranch's stone walls. Look closely at Spider's rippling stripes, and you'll find an arachnid lurking in the pile. Hill Country by Sara Story for Christopher Farr, at christopherfarr.com. Sara Story and Christopher Farr will discuss their collaboration at Texas Design Week Dallas on Monday, November 9, 11 am – 1 pm at Made Goods, on a panel titled "The Importance of the Decorative Arts and Craft in Interior Design." Tickets at texasdesignweek.com. Hill Country Grid rug in Cacti by Sara Story for Christopher Farr Sara Story at her family's Texas ranch Christopher Farr