Wool wall art (Stars, Diagonals, Cubes); 10-11. Wool square area rugs, red seam and yellow seam: At the beginning of the last century, many elegant homes in Guatemala had vibrant cement tile floors produced by artisans using hand-operated hydraulic presses. We grew up seeing hundreds if not thousands of geometric Escher-y tile designs in private homes and public buildings. So it was a labor of nostalgia for us to develop these designs as wall art and area rugs produced by a weaving cooperative in the western highlands of Guatemala. We use native wool produced by sheep that are direct descendants of the Churro breed brought from Spain in the 15th century. The first looms to weave this coarse wool were built in the 1850s, and the technology has remained the same since then. The designs we produce as wall art are stretched against solid kiln-dried wood frames, and those produced as area rugs are finished with a traditional contrasting color seam called a randa.
