5 Rug Favorites from Diane Paparo Studios

Irwin Weiner ASID - Custom rugs really elevate home decor. It's sometimes difficult to get the message across to clients that many rooms need a good "floor show" to tie in all the other disparate elements of a room together and create a broader harmony. While one should never try to pick a rug first and say, Now we'll decorate the rest of the room around the colorway and patterns in this rug, rugs are plentiful enough that one should leave special flooring as a finishing touch to room decor. Let me nominate Diane Paparo and her boldly-patterned line of studio area rugs and runners as excellent custom-made flooring candidates for your home. I've selected a few of Diane's imaginative rugs as my favorites; click on each photo for more information.

When I design rugs, the design may say one thing on paper, but in "real life" it's the adjustments I make before it goes into production that speaks volumes. I make many samples before the final rug is added to the line because the physical practicalities of hand-knotting affects the execution of the end design.

SNEAK PREVIEW: Tomorrow's post will feature an interview with Diane, and she'll give us the scoop on how to go about choosing wood finishes, stains, and treatments for home furnishings. We get lots of questions at Design2Share on this subject, and Diane's expertise in furniture making will come in handy for our readers!

Lotus Runner: Danish Morning Interlace Area Rug: Marine

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Beautiful Jewelry and Decorative Objects at De Vera

Irwin Weiner ASID - Last week I told you how I was early for a client appointment in lower Manhattan and took advantage of the extra time to go for a Soho neighborhood stroll, discovering some teriffic design stores. A cluster of posts on Design2Share have been devoted to telling you what I found during my pre-meeting walkabout - and my final post is on De Vera.

Federico de Vera designs jewelry. He collects art, religious artifacts, historic antiques, rare and curious oddities from all over the world - and they're found in NYC in two stores. I discovered his One Crosby Street location, but there's also one at 26 East 81 Street on the Upper East Side. It's difficult to describe any single object that I saw because, quite frankly, objects zoom in and out of the De Vera shops. Consider this the H&M of high-end decorative objects and one-of-a-kind jewelry. By all means, visit De Vera and enter Federico's fascinating world of collecting, designing, curating, and decoration.

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Meet Deborah Jiang Stein - Author of Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus

Jay Johnson - It's exciting to see an old friend do well, and I'd like to invite all D2S readers in the New York metropolitan area to join "A Conversation with Deborah Jiang Stein" at the Judson Memorial Church (55 Washington Square South, NY, NY 10012) on Sunday, May 6 at 3pm.

Deborah, who lives in Minneapolis, wrote the memoir Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus: Inside the World of a Woman Born in Prison. The name of her memoir says it all, and you'll learn the remarkable story of a woman whose rough start in life drives her to find true purpose even as she struggles to accept and overcome her own past, born in prison to a heroin addicted mother.

Readers of Design2Share come to us for inspiration about home design - but hardly anyone can imagine what starting life in a prison home is like. My friend Deborah Jiang Stein had to "go home" to prison before she truly found inner peace. She's now crossing the country, speaking up for a brighter future for incarcerated women and their children ... the truly forgotten people in our society. You'll love listening to Deborah's story and asking her questions. She's all about resilience and fun (okay, sometimes downright silliness!), taking hold of your life and having the courage to just plow forward. As Deborah says, "Please join me for conversation and a great time - and tutus are optional!" For more information about Deborah and her journey, check out her blog, Mutts Like Me, and her nonprofit venture, The unPrison Project, to serve women in prisons and their underage children. Deborah also blogs for Huffington Post, and you can find her - socially - on Facebook.

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6 Smashing Furniture Designs from The New Traditionalists

Irwin Weiner ASID - Last week I told you how I was early for a client appointment in lower Manhattan and took advantage of the extra time to go for a Soho neighborhood stroll, discovering some teriffic design stores. A cluster of posts on Design2Share will be devoted to telling you what I found during my pre-meeting walkabout. Let me tell you about The New Traditionalists.

Take a walk on the semi-wild side with a furniture company that believes in craftsmanship, high quality, furniture-making processes that have been in place for generations - and in an 1896 factory building in Connecticut. American Made. I like the ring of that, don't you?

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