Landry & Arcari teamed up with New England Home magazine to announce the winners of the third annual 5 UNDER 40 event. This competition, juried by a panel of top designers in the region, aims to identify the most promising young New England design talent from a range of disciplines -- architecture, interior, furniture, home products, and accessories.

After their selection the winners met with Jerry Arcari, who presented the concepts of rug design. Rug design is not simply a matter of color. The rug designers may manipulate material, texture, and weave to produce the desired effect.

On the basis of the information from Jerry Arcari, the five designer set to create their designs. After about two weeks, they were ready to meet with a Landry & Arcari staff rug designer, to solidify designs. Working with each designer separately, Landry & Arcari helped them select the appropriate colors from a large pool of colors swatches of wool and silk. Landry & Arcari also assisted in the selection of textural options: incorporating silk or hemp in addition to wool; cutting the pile to variable heights; adjusting the weave by using looped weave or soumak stitch in addition to cut pile. Overall this process transformed the ideas into a form that Landry & Arcari could send to the weavers in Nepal to the create the rugs.

For the next three months, the weavers in Kathmandu transformed the designs into actual rugs.

Above: Weaving the winner's designs in Kathmandu, Nepal

The culmination of this process is the auctioning of these rugs on September 13 at cocktail party at the Atrium next to Landry & Arcari's Boston Back Bay showroom. The proceeds of the auction benefit Barakat, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, non-profit organization, that promotes educational opportunities for women and children in central and south Asia.

For anyone who is reading this blog before September 13and is interested in bidding on any of these rugs, pre-bididng is available online. Tickets to the cocktail party and the completion of the auction are also available online before the event.

Here are the five rugs:

Designer: John Day; A photo of flowers on a rocky hillside inspired this design. This design emphasizes texture by having each design element in a different height of pile. The silk fuschia pile is the highest, the light grey is the lowest. The size is 5' x 8'.

Designer: Asher Dunn; The different color yarns are intermixed on irregular boundaries. The contrast among colors is enhanced by having each color with different mix of wool and silk. The size is 4' x 8'.

Designer: Amy Hirsch; The designer created the three-dimensional effect by emphasizing contrast in tone, weave, and material. The background is ivory soumak-weave wool; the design is brown cut-pile silk. The size is 5' x 7'9".

Designer: Liz Stiving Nichols; Twenty-five shades of color and gentle curves achieve the subtle organic look of this rug. For further interest, the design element is placed on a naturally colored hemp background. Size is 5' x 8'. Designer: Kelly Taylor; This design plays with color and texture to create a very modern look. The darker grey color has a unique texture from alternating rows of cut pile and looped pile. The size is 3'1" x 8'.