One month of traveling through Uttarakhand, India barely scratched the surface of the vastness and diversity of the place, but offered back a lifetime of learnings and inspiration.
Culture chats over lunch & a studio visit
My way of doing business has evolved in a non-traditional manner. Unlike most businesses, I didn’t set up a showroom. I simply took the lead from the designers I’d connected with to make them custom carpets - always with my eye towards offering innovation in pattern and materials. For example, seeing the beauty of a Berber rug, Groundplans became the first to place it in a contemporary American home.
Next, spying a high luster Oushak rug - made of pure mohair with a traditional Persian pattern I queried, ‘Why pattern, let us make the luster shine through!” . The Persian rug dealer looked back as if I were crazy. I finally talked them into trying. We made an Oushak rug without a Persian pattern - soon receiving several orders and before we knew it, it took off when other manufacturers and carpet dealers jumped in. Now a mohair area rug without a pattern is seen to be commonplace.
My mission has seemingly become to constantly push the boundaries of flooring ideas to create pieces that envelop the floor while elevating the materials to engage with the whole interior and the people who live with it. The examples are not only the luxurious Oushak and Berber rugs I just mentioned but is also bringing to the contemporary market trompe l’oeil in the 1980’s - Rocks at Ise and Autumn Leaves.
Along those lines, I took a beauty of a constellation and imbedded it with sparkling fiber optic lights. Soon I was collaborating with Swarovski Crystal to place their small crystals into the lower looped pile for a sparkle that could be walked on.
This digging below the surface became quite literal when I hand carved and felted into a cut + looped pile rug - enriching it with a depth and mid-century sense of abstraction that Starwood Hotels picked up on for their Spa Suites.
ALoft elevator Gel Tiles
Another international project with Starwood W hotels involved bringing Gel Tiles to the surface, quite literally - step on them and the colors move underfoot. We placed them in all their elevators worldwide.
When I was asked by the same architects to oversee the production of a carpet for a communal sitting area in Korea, instead of simply working with the architect’s 2 color Western influenced grid pattern, I felt inspired to bring to the design some of the local Korean imagery. Looking through my design library and archives, I was able to find a traditional Korean flower motif to invigorate the boxed voids. While at first the designers were somewhat skeptical, as the concept and design grew and samples were made they all came to love it. What was created as a one-off soon became a hospitality trend - to borrow from and incorporating the beauty of the local culture into the new interior. https://www.groundswellbyjo.com/floored-3#res-suite
Soon after my first collection won accolades from the press, I was the recipient of a groundswell of activity from local designers and architects and so segued part of my business into overseeing their designs. It became inter-productive, efficient and affordable. Low overhead and energy efficient: no storefront or warehousing of unused carpets. Long before it became the trend to be ecologically friendly to our environment.
This side income allowed me to build up my Groundplans collections. Some of my designs I have produced in collaboration with private clients or with select interior designers for their clients. With manufacturing capacities around the world to bring these designs to fruition, we have been able to keep our personal business within the confines of where we live, literally working from home base - since Covid this has become an acceptable way to work. So our pricing stays reasonable without the high markup showrooms have to give.
For several years I found it invigorating to make carpet designs with materials and/or patterns not previously explored. Eventually I segued my skillset into interior design projects, gut renovations, creating this Abode/Blog site as a platform to bring my thoughts as a way to share. More recently my interest has grown to try and bring out the inherent beauty in everyday or discarded objects.
Incorporating found objects into my lighting and jewelry, I try to rescue them from indifference. Both my daughter and I have been elevating them to become a part of our arsenal of ingenuity and rebirth.
Jody’s old/new collection story - COMING FULL CIRCLE
Each piece is worked differently so it becomes a non-repeatable art piece.
I try to imbue each piece I create not only with technical innovations but a sense of playfulness and whimsy. In ding so each becomes a non-repeatable art piece. Whether my works are lighting, jewelry or area rugs seem to reveal the threads of a combined worldwide training in the arts, design and craft - from East to West and back again. My daughter, from her earliest years stood right beside me. She’s not only modeling the jewelry, she created the cuff she’s wearing.
Eileen designed the cuff, I the necklace, earrings and model
Richard Sohl - pianist for Patti Smith Group gifted me the angel pin when I was 16
These blog entries on MEXICO are a consolidation of various topics I’ve been researching over many years. To offer you a fuller picture I have included my references.
The well-received US artists and architect I cite took their inspiration from both Mesoamerican and contemporary Mexican cultures. They share with us a glimpse of the enormous richness of Mexican culture.
Aztec Sun Stone ~1502
Dresden Codex/Mayan Book ~ 11or12C
What do Siquieros, Diego Rivera and Jackson Pollock all have in common? Let’s begin….
One single click of the camera could capture the power of realism instantly. This new medium called photography as well as the moving picture would usurp the tedium of replicating Realism in Art. This left Los Trés Grandes free to interpret the world any way they liked.
Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) the most renowned North American architect borrowed from ancient Mayan + Aztec cultures and directly from the Pyramids of Mesoamerica to create his awesome buildings. Who knew?
Mexico is where and how Ruth Asawa says she learned her metal wire crafting during a brief trip to Mexico. It was during this trip to Mexico that she was encouraged to enroll at Black Mountain College. Many students and faculty from Black Mountain would go on to become a who’s who list of prestigious names in the Art World.
To Wolfe, fame and success were opposing ideals, and very early on he made an unshakable commitment, not toward marketability and commercial advancement, but to his unique vision as an artist and his integrity as a man.
Retapping Resources
It seems those in the “industry” with huge monetary outlays of infrastructure don’t take Groudplans way of adventurous experimenting to heart and seem reticent to appreciate it when they see it. Looking like a small fry, without the showroom and staff operations compared with others having this huge overhead has allowed me to experiment with design structure while passing these savings onto our customers.
But then others saw it and ran with it….many of my carpet designs that I didn’t bring to market but shared with others - both designers, dealers and manufacturers in the hopes of monetary gain have been appropriated without any monetary accommodation to me. They have become commonplace finds on the market. Those who seem lacking in innovation picked up on them and ran with it.
Our eponymous carpet collection, Groundplans was conceived in the late-80’s with the intent of bringing the beauty of earth’s topography indoors and underfoot. These designs from my first collection debuted over 30 years ago. Since then they have been taken up by others and spread far and wide.
Groundplans 1990 Rocks At Ise / Tai Ping 2007 for St Regis
BUFFETT to BLAME???
“Buffett?”, you might ask.
His ownership of 60+ businesses are enterprises that he bought and shrunk to eke out the most profit without considering the harm done by shrinking US manufacturing - profit being the main goal. In hindsight I see my business was directly affected. I worked with a great manufacturer in Dalton, Georgia. They’d literally ring me up (back in the day) to let me know if a color seemed off for a series of Superman rugs I was making for Warner Bros Studio Stores.
Once the parent company, Shaw Rugs was bought Buffett preferred letting the not so profitable ones go by the waist-side - production being sent oversees. This forced me to work with unethical middlemen here in the Stateside - dealers with overseas manufacturing connections who helped themselves to my designs, profits and clients. And a couple of oversees manufacturers are still profiting, without showing me a dime for over 20 years. This after I shared my designs with them in the hope of receiving royalties - even having them sign Non-Appropriation Agreements and copyrighting them.
Buffett was one of the first to figure out how to do away with what were the original ma + pa U.S. owned businesses - built from the ground up - to squeeze the most profitability out of an existing business and then taking it public. Thus he was able to move his shares over a generational timeframe from a couple of hundred dollars a share to presently almost half of $1million/share for the top 1%. Bravo “Oracle of Omaha”.
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND
And while on the subject of Buffett…
If Buffett, Gates, etc. paid their fair share of taxes there would be enough to go around the table for public good. Instead under the guise of giving away 1/2 their billions of wealth while they’re still alive, they set up ways to give that tax money to niche organizations - the likes of universities and foreign investments. While in this country, when parents can’t afford to take care of their sick children, the government takes them away and puts them in foster care.
Don’t these uber successful men understand a fundamental principle of economics? These people who are in such need, if given a leg up offered by government programs would in turn be buying the products these uber wealthy men own and sell. Wouldn't this make them that much more profitable? AND it would significantly lower our national debt - possibly helping to bring us out of being a drug infested nation with a crumbling infrastructure and mass incarceration.
How wonderful it would be if these men took a listen and emulated the women counterparts in their lives; one now a deceased sister and the other an ex-wife:
Doris Buffett set up the Sunshine Lady Foundation to give a portion of her Berkshire Hathaway profitable stock $ to award scholarships for victims of domestic violence, college education for prison inmates, as well she made an effort to help people with mental illnesses.
Melinda Gates set up Pivotal Ventures, investing in female-led or minority-focused venture firms.
Please excuse me, getting carried away - back to my designs….
RUST rug I made for the Fairfield Hotel lobby in NYC
On the imagery side there is my RUST rug which I now see likenesses of popping up all over- a surface design embellishing carpets in showrooms, magazines and on the internet:
BURSTS designs took on a life of their own when others saw it
BURSTS rug I installed for 48 Lex conference room - 2004
Even though select manufactures such as Milliken + Interface Flor as well as my personal manufacturer in India signed Non-Appropriation agreements of my copyrighted designs that didn’t stop them….
Mine on the left and theirs on the right.
copyrighted 2005
and then there is MESH
My “trusted” manufacturer who I shared my designs with in hopes of receiving royalties, copied the design exactly to shop it around. Home Depot for some 20 years sold it as well as various iterations of it. “Show me the money, Honey”.
With many look-alikes:
The copyrighted name MESH is used verbatim by Carnegie and Ruckstuhl
In the U.S. we seem to set up the look minus the content. We simply copy, dare I say - steal what already exists.
“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” - Pablo Picasso
For people who’ve seen their work pop up in various places, please let this be a lesson to not hold on and not to wait - others will surely bring it to life without you. Put your creation out there as soon as possible.
And if not, it’s never too late to take back your creations. I have decided since I have been seeing the seeds of my designs elsewhere, it’s my turn to produce them. Coming out with a new collection, I want it seen as the total vision it was meant to be. Not fragmented pieces or extrapolated concepts devoid of the endless hours I spent maturing them. Because if someone is expropriating them, they don’t necessarily have the capacity to evolve them.
Unfortunately and to the huge benefit of those copying, I found legal action as a recourse is a costly endeavor with no guarantee of winning. Our copyright laws do not seem to help the matter - with only a slight change to the design, I am told by experts the copyright becomes null and void. And with only a 3 year look back of sales, no matter when or where the copying was found. There is an old Chinese proverb: won lawsuit, lost money.
In a Business of Home article, June 2021 they express how pervasive this is. To quotes:
We’re rich in inspiration but relatively poor in design education. Many knockoffs are not, technically speaking illegal.
Life is certainly full of twists, turns and meanders. Some 10 to 25 years later I am revisiting my now uber borrowed designs - evolving these designs to become au current flooring. One Design Then Two…Stay Tuned Megaverse. So much more on the horizon….
It is our mission to assist the designer or layperson to avoid pitfalls they might otherwise encounter when sourcing online with a difficult-to-communicate-with manufacturer or one of the many unethical dealers acting as the middle-man - umm person. This middle-person more often than not comes to the table with little to no design experience.
When promoting works, I have learned from the Japanese a sensible approach - that it’s best and easiest to make oneself part of a bigger picture to move one’s career forward. This foundation formed by the many gives each a base to work from as well as helping to navigate the complexities of business.
As rug and textile lovers, we appreciate the value of a cozy home. And as handmade rug lovers, we also understand that craftsmanship and sustainable materials need not be sacrificed for cost. Creating an oasis that feels indulgent is less about throwing together a few luxurious pieces - warmth is a physical sensation, but it is also a mental state of being.
Welcome to our series of posts “Exploring the Spirit”. Last time, we discussed compassion and love as the glue of the universe. Here we think about our attention as we fragment focus with more free time.
In late 2019, we paid a visit to a project we had completed nearly seven years prior. Large scale handknotted rugs were placed throughout the grand halls and meeting rooms of a large office campus building.
Our friend’s family has been weaving our Trousseau rugs for hundreds of years. Weaving has existed for nearly as long as man has existed, and yet the art is now dying out. I had the fortune of the seeing the traditional wooden looms and machinery used to spin the yarns and weave and wash the rugs.
We’re back to explore these topics in small snippets as part of our ‘Fleeting Moments Series: Exploring the Spirit’. Our first of the the series is below and we will be posting weekly. We’d love to hear from you and are soliciting guest authors so send us your thoughts, big or small, wild or mundane.
Most recently we completed a project for a new building at Yale University, the Tsai Center for Innovation Thinking.
Commemorative Groundplans rugs celebrating the centennial of the woman's right to VOTE!