Successful kitchen designer Joanne Hurd was minding her own business when her intuitive design sense manifested in fantastical patterns that sometimes appeared to her in the wee hours. Not that she leads with that.
We knew Hurd as a kitchen designer and went to say hello when she exhibited at an artisan fair; she’d brought her chest of 1,400 exquisite yarn samples, several full-size rugs, and a photomontage of others. That’s how we discovered her designs for beautifully hand-knotted wool and silk rugs ... Is this one a little bit Morris or Voysey? Or maybe Knox—but then again, something tribal, African or aboriginal. All with an underlying design mathematical in the way of a nautilus or fern.
The work is not reproduction or even interpretive. It is essentially new, and truly Arts & Crafts. Even as a little kid, Joanne says, she found drawing rhythmic pattern on paper magical. She and her twin sister would unroll brown paper on the floor and settle in to draw house plans and even towns. She and her older brother often rearranged bedroom furniture, taking delight in creating a totally different feeling in the room.
Her brother became an architect and interior designer: “He gave me the nudge to pursue my own interior design degree,” Joanne says. “Years later, still doodling, I was managing my kitchen-and-bath design business when he asked me to assist with carpet designs. That was a brief interlude in the 1980s. I’ve been doing my own rug and tapestry designs only since 2009.”
All commissioned pieces are made-to-order from designs that either are customized from the collection or newly created from the client’s own inspiration. “The team in Nepal is wonderful... I’m now an importer proudly licensed by Good-Weave, a global non-profit foundation dedicated to eliminating child, forced, and bonded labor in the carpet industry.”
Joanne Hurd
Interior DesignScapes in Motion
Gloucester, Mass.
(978) 283-5105
jshurddesign.com
Patricia Poore is Editor-in-chief of Old House Journal and Arts & Crafts Homes, as well as editorial director at Active Interest Media’s Home Group, overseeing New Old House, Traditional Building, and special-interest publications.
Poore joined Old House Journal when it was a Brooklyn-brownstoner newsletter in the late 1970s. She became owner and publisher and, except for the years 2002–2013, has been its editor. Poore founded the magazines Old-House Interiors (1995–2013) and Early Homes (2004–2017); their content is now available online and folded into Old-House Journal’s wider coverage. Poore also created GARBAGE magazine (1989–1994), the first unaffiliated environmental consumer magazine.
Poore has participated, hands-on, in several restorations, including her own homes: a 1911 brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and a 1904 Tudor–Shingle Style house in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she brought up her boys and their wonderful dogs.
