L'Art Noir Rug

Eileen Gray not only created some of the most iconic 20th century furniture classics but also ran a studio where rugs were produced based on her designs. Some of her most beautiful designs are part of our rug collection.

The L’Art Noir rug stems from a creative phase in which Gray – influenced by movements such as the Bauhaus – engaged intensively with minimalism, symbolic geometry and material honesty. Various original gouaches depicting the circular rug illustrate just how deeply Eileen Gray explored the psychological impact of colour. The studies reveal how she varied the proportion of black within colours and juxtaposed them in a segmented circle. This exploration of “black art” is directly reflected in the name L’Art Noir, which aptly captures the design concept behind the rug. One of these colour studies served as the template for the hand-knotted rug produced by ClassiCon, characterised by four concentric circles, each composed of two contrasting coloured halves.

The colours used evoke the stormy sea, the pale sand and the gentle vegetation of a beach – an atmospheric interplay that makes the rug’s origins almost tangible. For the original L’Art Noir rug lay in Eileen Gray’s villa E1027 on the Côte d’Azur, where it served as a striking design accent that shaped the room’s timeless modernity.