Recreated carpet design pattern shown with test sample weaving and custom-dyed yarns

Verbal Description

Hello, my name is Rick Young and I am a Gallery Attendant at the museum. I will be reading the verbal description for the Carpet Samples in Unlocking an Art Deco Bedroom by Joseph Urban.

These reproduction Carpet Samples from 2022 are wool. They were created by the American Langhorne Carpet Company, which was established in 1930. They are after a design by Joseph Urban, an Austrian-born American who lived from 1872 to 1933.

This is a sample of the carpet reproduced for the Wormser bedroom. The carpet is decorated with a design of abstracted flowers, circles, and fish-shaped forms in blue, green, and beige on a black ground. 

Label Copy

Hello, my name is Rick Young and I am a Gallery Attendant at the museum. I will be reading the label for the Carpet Samples in Unlocking an Art Deco Bedroom by Joseph Urban.

These reproduction Carpet Samples from 2022 are wool. They were created by the American Langhorne Carpet Company that was established in 1930. They are after a design by Joseph Urban, an Austrian-born American who lived from 1872 to 1933

Astonishingly, when Elaine Wormser moved out of her family’s Drake Tower apartment, she took most of the elements from her bedroom with her—including a large portion of the wall-to-wall carpet. To avoid the potential stress and damage that might result from installing the remaining portions of the original carpet, the museum collaborated with the Langhorne Carpet Company to create a reproduction floor covering for this exhibition. Referencing a fragment of the original carpet and Urban’s original watercolor sketch for the pattern, artists re-created the carpet design and custom-matched yarns to replicate its original colors. Once the design and colors were finalized, weavers used a large industrial loom, much like the one used when the original carpet was made, to create the new carpet.

Back to the Audio Exhibition