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SOME NEWS: posted October 13, 2018
I'm honored to be included as part of "the guild" highlighted throughout the recently released issue of the national magazine Arts & Crafts Homes on October 9, 2018 (Resource Guide 2019). Editor-In-Chief Patricia Poore, who has featured a small editorial on my work, makes note of some of her impressions of
J.S.HURD rug & tapestry designs:
"The balance of imagination and execution is flawless".
"...Is this one a little bit Morris or Voysey? Or maybe Knox - but then again, something tribal, African or aboriginal. All with an underlying design mathematical in the way of a nautilus or fern. The work is not reproduction or even interpretive.
It is essentially new, and truly Arts & Crafts".
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"A Waldorf Bouquet"
center motif: Towers Lobby rug,
Waldorf Astoria, NY
This floral tapestry was inspired by an earlier design (circa 1982) that I created as a center motif for a rug in the Towers Lobby at the Waldorf Astoria, NY. The hand-draft on vellum - shown here as the original pencil drawing (not to full scale) - illustrates this motif that I then incorporated into the new tapestry (2018). Currently designed as a wall-mounted rug in wool or a combination of wool and silk, the design can be customized in different colorways to blend with a room's decor. As well, the backdrop of the bouquet can be re-created with an entirely different surround that would be more suitable for a design used on the floor.
hand-draft:
pencil on vellum
(circa 1982)
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...a couple of new designs recently
added to our collections...
"
"Backside of the Mask" "Between the Boardwalks"
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"Playing in the Undercurrents"
The "undercurrents" in this rug design were initially inspired by the challenge to integrate the interior architecture of the room and its mulitple doorways with the prescribed functionality and traffic patterns. It's a fairly small room: between the built-in bookcases and seating that provide the opposing edge details, the floor area is approximately 10' x 9'. In addition to the built-ins, the interior furnishings include a small barrel chair nestled to the inside corner of the lower bookcases and a round coffee table that services the built-in couch. Backing it all down, I positioned the watery motif in the rug design below the table - an anchoring point well seen through the table's glass top with slim metal border and base. From there, the "undercurrents" - and all the many creatures playing within them - both lead to and follow from the natural openings of the rooms beyond.
In visiting the Rug Gallery, you can see the above vignettes in larger images (Room Settings)
along with the face-on view (Design Plates).
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"Underwater Love Story"
...capturing a moment between the catfish and the seahorse -
a day dream somewhere below the warm watery surfaces...
This tapestry is best viewed with imagination and a soft gaze,
one in which we let our eyes go a bit blurry.
In visiting the Rug Gallery, you can see the above vignette in larger image (Room Settings)
along with the face-on view (Design Plates).
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"Two Sides"
Doorways - an obvious necessity for our comings and goings. When I'm walking through one... from one room to the next...I'm often fascinated with how it feels to leave one space and enter into another. The design of a rug, positioned smack on the threshold or on either side, can have an impact on how that transition feels. With un-mirrored pattern, I designed "Two Sides" to reveal two entirely different images that can elicit entirely different responses, all depending upon your imagination and from which side you choose to take in the view. In embellishing a "sense of entry" into a room that works from both sides of the threshold, the rug can be flipped... it just depends upon your mood and the desired effect.
In visiting the Rug Gallery, you can see the above vignettes in larger images (Room Settings)
along with the face-on view (Design Plates).
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"Ramdidas"
The graph for Ramdidas illustrates the structural basis of the design showing the limitless possibilities of what the rug can become. In assigning color and texture, the magic continues until the rug is born.
Gazing into the rug, this "kaleidoscope of creatures" comes alive. Stepping across boundaries, these creatures - with their many varied expressions - overlap and meld together, definitions becoming diffused. At last count, I was up to about 30. I'm always delightfully surprised when someone shows me that they've discovered yet another.
In visiting the Rug Gallery, you can see this rug in various vignettes and photos (Room Snapshops and Room Settings)
along with the face-on view in various colorways (Design Plates).