The Cult Of Carpet
By Jim (06/06/2018)
Hello everyone,
Carpets, particularly patterned carpets can have deep meaning for people. From prayer rugs, intricately woven but with deliberate flaws to demonstrate the fallibility of humans, to the flatweave kilims which have a life story literally woven into them.
But there are more modern - and some might say more frivolous - stories about how carpets have caught people’s imagination. Here are three such stories for your enjoyment...
Portland International Airport
The City of Portland, Oregon got the first buildings of its current airport - then billed as a ‘super airport’ - in 1940. Replacing a small airfield on Swan Island, Portland International Airport (known as PDX) set its sights high, expanding through the decades to take on more traffic - last year it saw more than 19 million passengers pass through its doors.
It has been renovated multiple times and, in the early 1990s, it got a new carpet. Originally installed to cut noise levels (the sound of thousands of passengers walking around a huge space on hard floor was getting annoying, apparently) the pattern became a key feature.
Designed by Laura Hill and Jon Schleuning of SRG Partnership Inc. - responsible for dozens of spectacular projects including the Seattle University Campus and the Space Gallery at the Musuem of Flight - it was a stylised depiction of the crossed north and south runways as seen from the control tower. It was also a bright blue-green or teal colour, in contrast to the more earthy tones of most airport carpets in the 1980s.
And for a few years, it was just like any other commercial carpet.
Most people, apart from design obsessives, probably wouldn’t notice what was under their feet. This tends to happen everywhere - without carpet, like paint and furniture, a space feels incomplete, but once it is in place it doesn’t receive much attention.
And this was the case with the PDX carpet, until the early 2000s - the joint forces of social media and smartphone cameras seem to have been key to the carpet’s cult status, as they have been to so many modern trends.
It started with people started taking ‘foot selfies' on the distinctive carpet as a visual shorthand for visiting or - more often - coming home to Portland. The carpet soon became associated with Portland in a more general sense and the Portlandians - known for their quirky, some might say slightly hipster, sensibilities, were quick to jump on it - or walk on it, if you prefer.
As of 2015, a search on Instagram for the tag ‘pdxcarpet’ returned 42,000 results (according to this article on Curbed) and several enterprising people got in on the action.
Keen cyclists Julie Krasniak and Jeremy Dunn got some cycling socks printed with the PDX pattern in 2013 - what they thought might be a novelty exploded and people clamoured for more. They were so successful that the couple actually managed to fund their own store, The Athletic, which is still running today.
The airport itself began to sell carpet-themed goods such as t-shirts, mousemats, umbrellas - even an IPA by local brewers ‘Rogue’ (sadly no longer available). Basketball Player Damian Lillard of the Portland Trailblazers (reportedly the city’s favourite sports personality) actually released trainers with the PDX carpet pattern.
Sadly, all things must come to an end - after 23 years, in 2013, the carpet was ripped out and replaced by a more modern but (so far) less favoured design.
But the iconic carpet isn’t gone forever; like pieces of the Berlin wall, it has become collectable - yes, you too can now own a piece of the carpet itself! Buy it as a doormat or framed on your wall via the PDX Carpet Project, along with the numerous products mentioned above.
DragonCon And The Marriot Hotel
Whereas in other ComicCon style events, folks will turn up dressed in something relatively close to their source materials - you will see recognisable costumes of The Joker, Spiderman, Stormtroopers etc. at Dragoncon, you will find Captain Spiderman, a pink Darth Vader in a fancy suit and a TARDIS-inspired Optimus Prime.
It was in this spirit that Harrison Krixa of Volpin Props approached Dragoncon 2013. He and his friends decided to make themselves some camouflage outfits, but ones which would be appropriate for their actual environment - the Marriott Marquis Hotel, Atlanta.
At the time, the hotel had a very distinctive carpet designed by Couristan Inc. and Krix created clothes based on the pattern.
The resulting photos became a viral sensation on Reddit and popular with other DragonCon members - by 2015, the ‘Cult of the Marriot Carpet’ had become an entire part of DragonCon parade (which you can sign up to, if you wish), with dresses, armour, superhero leotards and even cars and vans all bedecked with the same unmistakable design.
But it hasn’t all been plain sailing - sadly, unlike the folks at PDX, Couristan weren’t too happy with these eccentric costume creators using their pattern for profit - they filed as Cease and Desist order against Volpin props for attempting to sell a version of the design as fabric via Spoonflower, so we’ll probably never be able to buy cycling socks in the Marquis hotel colours.
And once again time caught up with carpet- in 2016 the colourful original was ripped out and replaced with something altogether more sombre - still, the folks of DragonCon continue to ‘honour its memory’ every year!
The Overlook Hotel
Stephen King’s third novel, ‘The Shining’, was a bestseller when it was published in 1977, and it wasn’t long (3 years, in fact) until it was immortalised on film by director Stanley Kubrick, the auteur behind 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb).
King himself was notoriously unhappy with what he saw as Kubrick’s overly intellectual take on his source material, and with the numerous changes made to the story- nonetheless it has gone down in history as a masterpiece of film-making.
Famously obsessive and detail-focussed, Kubrick and his team managed every aspect of the setting, the foreboding Overlook Hotel. And one of the most recognisable features from this haunted house? The carpet.
Thanks to Film and Furniture (an excellent blog which curates and sells articles featured in movies) the origin of the pattern - which long remained a mystery - has been revealed. The person responsible for this dark, vivid and slightly unsettling design was David Hicks - the same David Hicks who gave Crucial Trading their big break back in the 1980s.
An interior designer to the wealthy and well to do, Hicks was behind many eye-catching motifs - this particular design is known as the ‘Hicks Hexagon’, and it was used for wallpaper, furniture and fabric.
The Iconic Carpet In The Shining -Image Found On Film and Furniture
Although the actual carpet in the Shining is most likely a replica rather than an original from Hicks (he himself did not recall being contacted by Kubrick or his team), it was very close to the ‘official’ Hicks pattern.
Although this is not a ‘cult’ carpet in the same was as the PDX or Marriott carpet, but it has attained cult status thanks to Kubrick Fans, who are every bit as obsessive as their subject. A documentary film about The Shining, ‘Room 237’, considers the different theories about the film and the hidden details which seems to support them.
For example, Kubrick was fascinated with chess and the pattern of the carpet seems to mirror a hexagonal chess board - there are plenty more in-depth analyses which we will skip for now, but < a href="https://filmandfurniture.com/2017/11/kubricks-carpet-in-the-shining/">you can read about them here.
And thanks to its iconic appearance in The Shining, the carpet has become a piece of movie history, even appearing in other films as a homage; in Pixar’s Toy Story, it is subtly placed in the house of the terrifying, toy-torturing neighbour, Sid.
Sadly we can’t sell the carpet ourselves, as Film and Furniture own the exclusive license to produce this particular pattern, but you can still buy it.
And, like the PDX carpet, it has ended up on numerous items like dresses, leggings, t-shirts, cups, coasters and...socks. Guess who makes the socks? None other than our old friends from Portland, The Athletic!
So, there’s three carpets which have a lot to say for themselves - perhaps our normal, domestic carpets don’t have such wild stories, but they can still mean a lot to us, and change how we perceive our home. Plus, there are plenty of carpets with interesting patterns available which will catch the eye and the imagination - you can take a look at some of them here.
Until next time, thanks for reading!
Further reading...
* The Cult of The Marriott Carpet - DragonCon Eternal Members
* Film and Furniture - Checkmate! The Story Behind Kubrick’s Carpet In The Shining Revealed
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