Experience Heather Chontos’s Paintings Underfoot

It takes up to 10 days for two to three artisans to make a Heather Chontos–designed rug. That’s hardly surprising considering the New York–born, Europe-based artist’s abstract paintings, literally drawn on everything from antique fabrics to stitched-together pieces of jute and found wood planks, are engrossingly alive with color and shape—and thus no small feat to replicate in hand-tufted New Zealand wool. Instinctively rendered lines and chroma fields define the three area rugs Collage, Kaleidoscope, and Blue Lake, with space, solid, and abrash dyeing capturing the depth of Chontos’s work. (“I don’t choose the colors, they sort of come to me,” she says, musing about her process.) Layered’s weavers switch between 10 and 15 yarn shades to follow the patterns before hand-cutting the rug to finish.