Tweaking Tradition

Since its founding in 1956, Tai Ping Carpets has perfected the art of employing Chinese hand-tufting traditions to make lush, modern rugs. But delivering that same sensibility in the form of modular carpet tiles required fresh talent. “There’s a real design heritage to Tai Ping,” says Phil Decker, the general manager of the company’s new contract division. “I wanted the first collection to have some sort of Asian influence without being clichéd or stale.”

Decker brought in the designer Ginger Gilbert, whose Frame of Ref­erence collection, debuting this month at NeoCon, takes its cues from the nods to landscape that are found in Japanese architecture. There are three designs: Portal (right), which resembles an ornamental bracket that often frames a garden view; Threshold, suggestive of the weave of a tatami mat; and Transom, a matrix of bamboolike stripes. The collection may be small, but it’s versatile: each pattern can be installed in 12 different ways.