Baa Baa Black Sheep, have you any wool… English Nursery Rhyme 1774
Rhyme Studio announces the exhibition debut of its eighth 2023 design collection entitled Black Sheep. Made using the rich deep brown and undyed wool of the Irish Zwartbles sheep, the eighth customizable design collection for the company promotes the miracle qualities of wool and the health of the interior and our environment before any other consideration. Fitting for any project that prioritizes wellness in interior design, Black Sheep is responsibly made by hand from genuine Irish grown wool.
“Black Sheep celebrates a resilient and organic fiber for carpet and textile creation that was traditionally considered worthless. It is also a fitting metaphor for the marginalization of wool over the last 70 years and the phrase’s connotations of social outcast originate at a time when the fleece of the black or dark brown sheep was considered undesirable because it could not be dyed” says designer Claire McGovern.
On the contrary this archetype today can represent an individual who is interesting because they are different and in the case of wool, a more sustainably desirable fiber precisely because it negates the dye process and must be celebrated in its most natural form. The Irish Zwartbles sheep meaning quite literally “Black with a white blaze” yield a high quality sustainable wool with a strong and tight crimp that is traditionally spun by historic Irish woolen mills and tufted by hand for Rhyme Studio. A resilient material that easily hides dirt, it is sourced directly from Irish nature and used in the creation of new designs to be exhibited such as “Eye Amulet”, “Geometry”, “Cornu” and the basis for the studio’s foray into its first Luxury Doormat series.
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Rhyme Studio is a New York City based wool carpet, tapestry and textile maker with design collections made in rural Ireland. Working with the last surviving and historic Irish woolen mills, the studio combines millennia of historical iconography and symbolic form with an artistic, sculptural and sustainable approach to wool surfacing. With responsible craft and provenance of material as founding principles, a primary source for its hand tufted creations is heritage, traceable Galway Wool from the spectacular western Irish coast. The studio began working with Irish wool in 2017 only to uncover a collapsed Irish woolen market and a global fiber industry dominated by synthetics and in need of reform. An extraordinary material that is traceable, antimicrobial, naturally water resistant, flame retardant and air filtering with the ability to even improve indoor air quality, wool is sourced directly from Irish sheep farmers.