A spirit of adventure and a keen interest in Chinese culture led artists Janis Provisor and Brad Davis to spend a year in China during the ’90s. During this time, the duo met the former manager of a silk carpet factory and began developing their own watercolour-based carpets. They produced complex weaving patterns that enabled artisans to create carpets with a painterly quality, while using silk yarns of the highest grade. “It was like teaching [a] Classical musician to play Jazz,” Davis recalls.

Named after the street the couple resided, Fort Street Studio was established in 1997. Over the years, the company expanded its creative repertoire to include carpets of diverse textures with hand-knotted and -woven creations made of wool, silk, as well as a combination of natural fibres. Today, Fort Street Studio has showrooms in New York, Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

Two decades later, the new pieces continue to reflect the sense of wanderlust and experimental nature that led the brand to succeed from the beginning. A new carpet with a three-dimensional and tactile texture, BEADED is defined by a blend of weaving styles and mediums. The studio also extended its Drawn Lines collection with ALLIUM. Originally composed on paper using a ball-point pen, ALLIUM injects a hand-drawn and humanistic touch to spaces. The carpet can also be customised in a round shape, complementing the radiating pattern.

One the studio’s latest designs, AVENUE was inspired by the pebble roads that the duo encountered during a trip to Italy. The hand-knotted carpet showcases texture and depth in classic indigo and silver colourways, which the designers can customise in terms of the pattern proportion for dramatic impact. Inspired by the graceful movement of dancers and the curvilinear style of Arabic writing, Janis Provisor created ARABESQUE, which offers a graphical aesthetic.

Not forgetting its watercolour roots, Fort Street Studio have created DESU, which sports the brand’s signature subtle colours and mesmerising watercolour bleeds. The painterly design references nature in an organic and poetic manner, creating an earthy environment that inspires calmness and relaxation.

Whether they are made of silk yarns spun from the wild silk worms of the Dandong region in China, or composed of a blend of wool and cultivated silk hand-knotted in India and Nepal, carpets created by Fort Street Studio resemble artistic works of art in the highest quality.