DESIGN & ARCHITECTURE

WHEN TWO BECOME ONE

Melding Personal Style into a Striking Interior Home Design

GINA SAMAROTTO

The great room of this lakeside mountain home is perfectly fitted with antique Persian village rugs that offer geometric designs and looser, more casual weaves.

“This is our home, our personal expression,” explains a collector in discussing the role her rare, antique Oriental rugs play in her home’s interior design. “We put things into it that are personal to us, that reflect our lifestyle.” The ability to choose pieces that vividly illustrate one’s own, unique taste is a similarity among those for whom creative, well-designed spaces are paramount.

“Antique rugs can tremendously enhance the ambiance of a home,” says Christine Winitz. “The properly chosen rugs lend depth and relevance to interior spaces in a way other collectibles can’t.”

The rug collector and artist who built this sumptuous Platinum LEEDS Certified home chose Laver Kirman carpets to cover her floors for their quiet, immersive designs.

Christine has superb credentials to make this comment. As world-class collectors of fine antique rugs, she and her husband, Jan David, have been at the helm of the Claremont Rug Company since its inception nearly four decades ago. Their design acumen is an important aspect of how they work to augment the unique individual tone of some of the world’s most sophisticated residences.

Christine continues, “Our clients use myriad different genres of rugs to help them add focal accents and distinguishing character to their residences, highlighting both the architecture and the intrinsic style of the individual themselves.”

Antique Persian Serapi carpets are often chosen to enhance the large open spaces of Mediterranean style homes because of their use of grand medallio and majestic palmettes.

Indeed, the Winitzs’ clients use different styles of rugs to distinguish and to highlight the character of their residences. Jan David indicates “The geometric patterns found in Bakshaish or Serapi rugs can underscore the beauty of various woods, expanses of glass and interior angles and bring an elegance that is well-suited to a contemporary home.” He added that the warm and inviting elements that are often found in a more casual home may be complemented by Persian village or Caucasian tribal rugs, whose larger knots and more loosely woven patterns contribute a more subtle, relaxed aesthetic to the space.

In unifying the interior design using one-of-a-kind, rare antique carpets, it is their intrinsic reflection of balance in both color and design that most readily inspires aficionados to live with them. Indeed, it is this intentional harmony woven into the finest High-Decorative to High-Collectible 19th century Oriental carpets that serves as the synergetic thread melding each individually distinctive piece of art, architectural nuance, style of furniture and choice of hue in a space. Art-level antique carpets provide a consonant melody to which the overall aesthetic may dance.

Jan David Winitz and Christine Hunt Winitz, Claremont Rug Company proprietors.

Asked which style of antique rug tends to make the most significant impact within any living space, the Winitzs agree on the elements that are defining factors. These include whether a carpet features more or less color, is created in an elaborate or simplistic style, and if it creates a bold or more subdued aesthetic. Yet, irrespective of how dramatic or subtle a rug may be, it is the harmonious combination of traits it possesses that gives it the ability to leave an indelible artistic imprint on the space it inhabits.

“The architecture of our new home is contemporary,” said another Claremont client, “but the antique rugs and other art we put in it are there primarily because they speak to us. Because they are all expressions of how we live and what we value, they all work together.”

More information about the 3500-rug collection at Claremont is available on the Gallery’s extensive website, www.claremontrug.com , which features more than 950 images