flooring

Martin Patrick Evan - Tiger Hide

PETA would approve of this custom wool Tiger Hide. To deliver this trophy animal skin without discomfort to the tiger population, John Patrick Dolan found a real hide at anantique store and hand-tufted 16 colors in combinations of twists and solids to reproduce the subtly gradating pattern of the original pelt. Made-to-order to the trade in loop- or cut-pile and infinitely customizable. 800-734-8214

Kravet - Eden

Kravet carpet offers a new collection of 35 designs that are in stock and ready for immediate delivery. Eden is a 100-knot-per-inch, hand-woven carpet made with wool and silk. For the designer on a draconian deadline, these rugs are ready-to-go in multiple colorways and stock sizes, from 3 feet by 5 feet to 12 feet by 16 feet. This is a garden that you can grow overnight. 800-645-9068

Tandus - Landscape Colours 

Influenced by Edward Burtynsky's photographs of civilization's detritus, Suzanne Tick designed Landscape Colours as an extension of the existing Manufactured Landscapes collection. These 24-inch-square reconfigurable carpet tiles are offered in 12 colorways. 800-248-2878

Tufenkian - Flower Power

Flower Power is a bold, oversized floral pattern from the company's Core collection. Hand-woven in both standard and custom formats, it comes in such colorways as Calypso, Powder Puff, Pixie, Cornstalk, and Sunshine. The Seacove colorway is a versatile palette of light ocean foam, teal, weathered gold, and mocha with chocolate highlights. 800-298-1749

Emma Gardner Design - Fishtail 

Fishtail swims with the opalescent scales of a sea creature. This hand-knotted area rug, composed of Chinese silk on a Tibetan wool ground, is available in standard sizes ranging from 6 by 9 feet to 9 by 12 feet. Gardner's underwater world is rendered in 1/5-inch cut-pile with 100 knots per square inch. 860-567-5201

Rosemary Hallgarten - Gio Ponti 

Despite its considerable charms, America's West Coast is a bit far from home for a subject of the British crown. So, what's a transplanted English rose to do? For Rosemary Hallgarten, her husband, and their two sons, the decision was to trade their home in San Francisco for a 200-year-old barn in Westport, Connecticut. “San Francisco is pretty and livable,” says the jewelry-turned-textile designer who lived on the Left Coast for nearly 13 years, “but I love having the proximity to New York.” She also finds New England, well, more English.

In search of a home to renovate, Hallgarten and her husband Simon, a hospitality property developer, fell in love with the 3,600-square-foot pine barn with its large, light-filled spaces and intact hayloft. Working with Studio 1200 principal and architect Kraig Kalashian, the Hallgartens added 5,000 square feet with a contemporary addition that connects to the original barn via a silo-like entry that houses a circular stair. “In San Francisco, we were in a very small space,” says Hallgarten. Here, “I felt like I had the space to put my own things.”

A texture aficionado, Hallgarten's rich pieces blend beautifully with the barn's antique wood planks and the addition's polished concrete floors. In the hayloft-turned-library, a 3-by-9-foot striped rug of alpaca and leather looks down on the living room's 20-by-25-foot Glaze rug, of hand-knotted alpaca. On Glaze rest alpaca-covered sofas, enhanced with throws of alpaca bouclé and 20-inch-square, hand-embroidered cotton pillows. Elsewhere in the room sits Hallgarten's crotched steel and leather chair, covered in shaggy fringe. An upstairs hallway pays homage to Gloria Finn, Hallgarten's rug-designing mother, who in the 1960's made the 5-by-7-foot New Zealand wool piece found there. Finn's work also appears in the bedroom, via the raised pile, hand-tufted Gio Ponti rug, named for the artist who commissioned Finn to interpret his paintings for the floor. Pillows of Suri alpaca sit on the bed. Amid the sample-packed shelves in Hallgarten's office is her favorite lounge chair, a piece of unknown provenance with moveable arms. Lounging on it, one catches sight of Guenevere, a vine-laden floral inspired by a William Morris painting. Clearly Hallgarten cannot escape her English roots. 203-259-1003

Expanko - Spinato and Pesca 

Chevron-shaped Spinato and gridded Pesca in the Italian Veneer collection are inlaid by Italian artisans, to create cork tiles less than 1/8-inch thick. Like other natural products from this manufacturer, these versatile and durable alternatives to hardwood can contribute to LEED credits. 800-345-6202

Designlush - Peacocks 

Be as proud as Peacocks of this spectacular rug, by O'Hare & D'Jafer. The exuberant rendition of the oversize, eye-dazzling motif is sculpted in hand-knotted silk and wool in three psychedelic color schemes. It's a statement piece for those with outgoing personalities. 212-532-5450

                                

 Treadlight - Flooring

Freelance magazine writer Peter Stark and his modern-dancer wife, Amy, bought a forest in Montana and soon realized the small stunted larch trees dotting the landscape were actually preventing the healthy ones from thriving. The couple culled the sickly specimens, using them to build a backyard dance studio, then began harvesting the hale and hearty trees to launch North Slope Sustainable Wood, and the Treadlight brand of flooring, trim, and windows. Stark calls it "a solution to the ongoing wars" between environmentalists and the timber industry. He's not kidding—the local chapter of the Sierra Club is now supplying the company with castoffs from its restoration project in Lolo National Forest in Missoula, Montana. Known as the softest of hardwoods, small-diameter Western larch features a tight grain pattern of honey and cinnamon highlighted by dark pinhole knots. The ¾-inch-thick flooring panels are offered in 1-by-3-inch, 1-by-4, and 1-by-5 widths. More than 1,000 molding profiles are available in standard and custom sizes, along with complete systems for casement, awning, and fixed windows. Take that, Paul Bunyan. 406-327-112