5 Under 40 Awards are presented by New England Home magazine and spotlight the hottest emerging talent in New England’s residential design categories: architecture, interiors, specialty design (furniture, textiles, lighting, accessories, and other home products), and landscape design.
These rugs will be auctioned off in person at the gala on Sept 12th with all the proceeds going directly to Barakat a Cambridge, Massachusetts–based charity that works to strengthen education and literacy in Central and South Asia. The 5 Under 40 rug auction has been the #1 fund raiser for Barakat over the past decade and has helped build schools, pay teachers, provide transportation and health care to thousands of girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Selected by an exceptional committee of regional design leaders, 5 Under 40 award winners are the people to watch, producing some of the most beautiful and innovative work available today.
Click here for tickets to the 5 Under 40 Awards Gala!
To place a proxy bid on one of the 5 rugs below, call Ken Gurley at the Boston Landry & Arcari showroom at 617-399-6500 or email kgurley@landryandarcari.com.
Edward Adams
Wagner Hodgson
My design is inspired by a “planting plan” my 4-year-old son and I drew together with colored pencils. As a landscape architect, I design outdoor spaces that extend the interior lifestyle. For this design, I wanted to bring the outside indoors. The organic shape, soft knots, and varying heights create a visual and tactile bridge between interior decoration and planting outside. I often play with my son on the floor, so I wanted this rug to prompt folks to engage with it—even lie down on it—instead of simply walking across it during daily routine.
Darien Fortier
Hacin
Inspiration:
As a maker at heart, my work is highly inspired by collaborating directly with fabricators to understand how things are made. I started this design exercise learning about Nepalese rug making, and quickly became inspired by this intricate and time-intensive craft.
I found myself wanting to honor the process and craftsmanship, experiment with textural techniques, and reference various stages of its construction. As such, the design embraces raw elements, utilizing undyed wool fiber and natural hemp as the main material choices with select ends left loose and raw, indicative of what a rug looks like on a loom before it’s finished off. Starting at the bottom, loops transition into piles as one moves upward, showcasing the thousands of hand-woven knots individuals create prior to being cut into the ‘pile’ we associate with a typical carpet. Hemp loops are interwoven among lush piles on the top portion of the rug to emphasize verticality and linearity, as a reference to the grid that designs are meticulously translated to prior to weaving.
The result serves as an homage to rug making, aiming to evoke a sense of natural rawness and a delicate yet architectural sensibility, while ultimately bringing warmth to the home through a piece that tells a story.
Cory Gans
Cory Gans Photography
Inspiration:
The inspiration for this design came from an enduring crosshatching pattern, a doodle sketched throughout my school years — an artful way to pass time and fill the margins.
As I delved into crafting the rug, I found myself drawn to the idea of it presenting as unassuming and monochromatic from afar. Upon closer inspection, it would reveal a tapestry woven with meticulous deliberation and intricate nuances. This sentiment encapsulates the core of my design ethos — embracing simplicity as a guiding principle, yet harboring a wealth of hidden detail waiting to be unearthed.
Heidi Lachapelle
Heidi Lachapelle Interiors
Inspiration:
This rug design is based on a series of my etchings and monoprints that utilize a unique layering process. This process highlights the tension between sharp lines and those that are more fluid. At our firm, Heidi Lachapelle Interiors, we aim to design spaces that blend modern and traditional sensibilities—using this tension to create interest and balance. We find this approach yields a well-designed and considered space that lives on effortlessly, long after we’ve finished our work.
Blair Moore
Moore House Design
Inspiration:
I have been inspired lately by an infusion of German artists from Hans Arp to Paul Klee in their search for form, composition, color and a majorly line continuity.
Through a series of continuous line sketches of New York apartamento scenes I wanted this piece to both capture our connective way we live in a 3D landscape contorted within linear perspective
The color within this piece and a lot of our work is derived from my Australian roots growing up on a working cattle property. Pulling in a collection of hues and pigments that would be found or formed upon the land.
My journey in form within all of my work at Moore House Design is to try to really capture the journey of how a connective storyline continues through both a project and a subject.
