New York: Part II

My friend, Stefan over at Architect Design, also had the opportunity to tour Scalamandré, and he had a very different experience than I did. So go on over there and take a look… I will wait.  Good, you’re back!

I had a chance to look at some of the newer designs in Scalamandré’s line of fabrics, and they are just stunning. One particular design I fell in love with was a woven design which looked like embroidery. The depth of this fabric was just incredible and the range of colours was gorgeous. I especially loved this saffron colour. This striped fabric was intriguing, since it had been elevated from being a simple stripe to something quite elegant by making each stripe a different weave. Some were flat, some were matte, others were grosgrain.

Another pattern that I love is shagreen, which is essentially shark’s or stingray’s skin. It’s a bumpy sort of texture and can be quite elegant, as these gorgeous fabrics prove. There was a stunning pillow made with the colourway on the bottom left, in the window at Scalamandré, but the light was such that I couldn’t get a clear image of it. One of the new things I learned was about “blankets”, which are the test patterns when the weaver figures out the colour patterns and checks that all is in order before the run moves forward. The pattern stays the same over the piece, but the colours change. I liked this as much as anything else, and heard that Syrie Maugham used these blankets for curtains. Thanks so much to marketing wizard and former Baltimorean, Janice Langrall, for arranging the visit to Scalamandré for me. It was such a fun afternoon and I learned so much!