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Carpets are no longer an afterthought, as Fort Street Studio redefines this interior centerpiece in their exquisite 100% wild silk carpets, that bear a painterly likeness with subtle suggestions of light and richly seductive hues.
Brad Davis and Janis Provisor are a couple in love, not only with each other but also with the challenges of the artistic journey and the luxury of honoring authenticity along every step of the creative path. Established New York artists, they applied their painterly vision, collaborative spirit, and enduring respect for the aesthetic, living traditions of China to the creation of carpets that are truly beyond compare.
From an initial 1989 visit to Hang Zhou, China - a center of the silk industry - to an eight and half year stint as Hong Kong residents, the subsequent revival of a bankrupt rug factory near Hang Zhou and the founding of Fort Street Studio in 1996 upon their first silk carpet creation, the foundations of Fort Street Studio are solid. Today, comprising showrooms in New York, Los Angeles and Hong Kong, with representation in Milan’s Alberto Levy Gallery and London’s Sinclair Till Flooring Company, behind Brad Davis and Janis Provisor’s highly coveted handmade products is a cultivated investment in a dedicated team of master craftsman in their rural Chinese workshop. While many companies flock to China for cheap labor, Davis and Provisor invested in China with what, arguably, constitutes any sustainable meaning of the word “investment” – with respectful understanding, personal vision, and a passionate love of the culture’s past and present.
The ultimately plush texture of the 100% Dandong Wild Silk pile of the carpets is, of course, the sensory base for their luxurious appeal. The designs of the carpets, however, are utterly striking and are the result of years of development and hours of handicraft and technology, such as custom-designed software that magnetizes and translates the gradations in color into a weaver’s map. Like modern and abstract watercolors – with shadows, highlights and subtle gradations in hue gleaned from German and Swiss dyes – the designs of the carpets express truly original patterns and a character of extreme understatement and modernity. If art can make an entryway into craft, it certainly has here, as artistic imagination is transformed into a tangible, livable art.
In addition to the expanding, yet already extensive, portfolio of carpets available, Fort Street Studio is open to creating bespoke carpets with design professionals. To celebrate its anniversary year in the autumn of 2009, a limited edition carpet has been created with pure gold thread from a centuries-old Chinese tradition woven within it.
Upon entering a well appointed home, most people immediately look at the art on the walls, or the furniture that invites them. A sure sign of a design-conscious mind, however, are those who look down. A carpet can unify a space, vivify or harmonize certain colors, and add a mute but powerful aspect of dimension, warmth, and sensuality to interiors. And as living begins to happen – the shoes come off or the kids begin to play – there is perhaps not a carpet in the world that will seduce the barefooted sybarite more than those of Fort Street Studio.
http://www.fortstreetstudio.com
In three words, what makes your carpets stand apart, placing them beyond carpets found in today’s market?
Brad: Sophisticated, Voluptuous, Painterly
Janis: Smart, Sensuous, Seductive
What is the main skill you’ve learned as painters, that has directly translated into the process of creating the carpets?
Brad: An appreciation of the nature and use of materials: how light plays such an important role in color perception, how composition organizes artistic intent but, most of all, the awareness of the difference between painting and design. A painting tends to be autonomous and singular in itself. A carpet relates to other elements around it. A painting has a one-directional composition, while a carpet must function well from any direction you approach it, and “ it’s on the floor!”
Janis: Making art has definitely informed how I paint the designs for the carpets, but there is an enormous difference in approach…making art is about an idea, while painting a design is about an idea with a specific audience in mind. “Art Rugs” are almost always failures, as they cling to the notion of a picture without any consideration of position in a space. To this end, I can begin to paint, but Brad is the master in envisioning how the watercolor can become a carpet and not a painting for the floor.
What is the most time-consuming step in their process of creation? The most technical? The most satisfying for you as creators?
By far, the most time consuming part is transforming the watercolor into a weaveable pattern – many days to several weeks, at its most difficult.
The dyeing and sampling of the colors is the most technical. The most satisfying, of course, is seeing the successful finished carpet.
How do you balance the work between the two of you?
We finish each other’s sentences. So, balancing our work is somewhat difficult, as we tend to work together all the time. But, Janis would say, “I’m more intuitive while he’s the more rational problem solver…so he concentrates on production while I work on sales and marketing, but we’re each involved in almost every aspect of the design process.” From designing our first house together, we came up with a process of using intense persuasion to convince the other of our point of view while allowing each other final veto on an idea or color, if we could not convince the other. It seems to have worked.
What responses have you received from interior designers who have worked with your carpets?
When they “get” them, they love them. They are surprised how well they harmonize with their own vision, given how unusual the designs.
Please explain the cultural and, if applicable, the personal significance of adding gold thread into your 10th anniversary carpets.
We have always loved the silk and gold 17th century Persian Polonaise carpets.
Also, I heard that there was a renovation of the Qianlong Emperor’s private quarters in the Forbidden City, and they were reproducing the 18th century silk and gold carpets there. We sourced the manufacturer of the gold yarn and came up with the Glimmering design as a modern homage to their glamour.
What do you find particularly advantageous about working with Dandong Wild Silk?
Brad: It’s stronger and more resilient, which lends itself to a thicker plusher pile. It has a seductive suede sheen and dyes to a soft glowing hue.
Janis: I’m particularly enamored with using Dandong Silk because it imparts a suede like finish, which in time ages like worn velvet. And, walking on the plush pile is simply divine.
Could you please tell us an interesting story or anecdote about the old factory that you revived in China?
Brad: After the first successful order with the third factory we employed, it went bankrupt. This happened only a month after our USA debut. We were desperate to secure a reliable source of production. So, we made a proposal to the local bank that held the assets of the factory. We would revive it and guarantee production quotas, if we could reorganize it to our specifications, hire the best workers and install a new manager. They warily agreed, and after the first year, it posted the first profit in its 25-year history. At the celebration dinner, a local investor asked me if I was this generation’s Walter Nichols, who was the originator of the best Chinese Art Deco carpets of the 20s and 30s. This was the highest compliment I have ever received for our work.
Janis: It’s a tradition to inaugurate a new workshop in China by unveiling a red silk cloth from the plinth of the factory …much like having the curtain part for the play to begin. Brad was in the States, so I was the one to do the unveiling. It was a cold, extremely windy day…I was bundled up with a down jacket balanced on top of a high ladder with the huge piece of red cloth blowing wildly in the wind, while everyone was taking pictures, and I was concentrating on not being blown off the ladder. When the job was done, we had an extraordinary banquet cooked by the workshop manager’s wife, who is a fabulous cook. It was a great and amusing day.
As a couple, you have a developed history and relationship with China. With all the attention on China at the moment, what do you feel are some of the misconceptions about the country and the culture?
China is viewed as this giant monolith of 1.2 billion people, when, in fact, it is this lively, diverse, and surprisingly anarchic place. While still emerging from several devastating revolutions with the attending poverty and chaos, not to mention, strict government influences, China has retained a deep love and respect for all the arts – perhaps greater than any of its Western counterparts.
For you personally and for your work - Why China?
Brad: We first went to China because of our love of Chinese traditional painting, which led to a year’s adventure there in the early nineties, when anything seemed possible. We found potential, skills, and a willingness to try something new that we had never quite encountered before. That is not to say it was easy communicating or even, at first, envisioning what we would later accomplish.
Janis: Why China? At first, serendipity. Brad and I came together over our fascination with Literati style Chinese painting and then we were taken to China in 1989 to make traditional watercolor woodblock prints with a fine art print publisher, Crown Point Press. We were swept away by China and went back to live there for a year in 1994. All things seemed possible, so we decided to collaborate to make a silk carpet for our loft in New York. What began as a year in China and an artistic challenge turned into the next phase of our lives…and 9 years living in Asia.
Your company is a story of passion and determination. Upon your 10th anniversary, what lessons have you learned about realizing a dream and doing something that has never been done before?
Keep your eye on the artistic challenge and be willing to learn and adapt to every other situation in order to maintain that focus.
Which are your three favorite rugs?
Brad: Our favorite carpets are usually the last few that we have produced. They are fresh, vivid and still a mystery to us.
But there are some enduring favorites like:
Plaid – for its success in translating the layered transparency
Rocken – for its eccentric “take” on traditional carpet design
Karl – for its innovative patterning
Ring – for its iconic watercolor effect
Janis: I’m not sure I have a concrete favorite, as I’m both fickle and always pondering the next possibility. Currently, I love Ring for its iconic brushwork and SQ for the way the ground color changes are so subtle that it seems like it’s light rather than weaving. And Glimmering-Light (one of the anniversary pieces) continues to resonate for me.
What is your ideal décor, where you would love to see your rugs live?
One thing we like to stress is the versatility of our carpets, so the ideal is many different settings for one of our designs. However, in our own personal ideal world, we envision a clean wide-open modern space with an emphasis on beautiful materials…a place that is designed, but reflects, not just the designer’s vision, but also the individual owner’s unique personality.
Who are your favorite designers?
Luis Barrigan, Geoffrey Bawa, Gio Ponti, Oscar Niemeyer - all staunch Modernists with personal eccentricities and a love of the organic.
Who are you favorite artists?
Brad: Favorite artists fall off the cliff of impossibility.
There are just too many I have loved and learned from.
Three artists that stand as strong role models (but may not be familiar to most) are Dong Qichang, Huang Binhong, and Thelonious Monk. They all were known for their deep understanding of the past and for forging tough new expressions for the future.
Janis: My favorite artists…impossible to say. In the last year Marlene Dumas’s work kept bringing me back to it, we’ve collected Kiki Smith’s work but nothing has moved me more than the “The Descent from the Cross “ by Rogier Van der Wyden that is in the Prado Museum in Madrid.
Janis Provisor and Brad’s Definitions of Luxury:
Brad: Peaceful contentment
Janis:
“ NO CONSTRAINTS”
Brad:
OBJECT: A drop of perfectly clear water
PERSON: An old monk sitting in silence
MOMENT: An embrace with my wife
PLACE: A Caribbean beach, early in the morning
Janis:
OBJECT: My dad’s ring…the joy I get in wearing it and remembering him.
PERSON: My husband Brad and son Alec’s glorious smiles.
MOMENT: The bliss of Meditation
PLACE: Como Shambala in Bali …with Brad