This year, as Interior Design Show Vancouver (IDS) pivoted, like most other things, to a mix of digital and a few smaller, in-person events, it also bred design partnerships that maybe wouldn€™t have taken place otherwise. It brought Sasan Salari of Salari Fine Carpets, Henry Sun of Henry Sun Studio and Claudine Gevry and Jean Gelinas of Umbra & Lux, together€”a collaboration that materialized just about a month and a half prior to the event.

Salari Fine Carpet's East 1st warehouse, which is typically a trade-only showroom, was opened up to host €˜Home From Afar,€™ a collaborative exhibition that brings the exuberance of travel closer to home in a COVID world. €œwe're sharing our work in a way that will help bring people the feeling of traveling and seeing things from different places,€ Sun says.

 

At the open garage door-style entrance, one of Salari's rugs has been re-purposed and re-upholstered on a lawn chair frame that Sun found discarded. Salari Fine Carpets is a long-running family business that, in the last 10 years, has rebranded to manufacture custom contemporary rugs€”and partners almost solely with designers and architects.

Gevry and Gelinas€™ €˜Light Rain€™ dangles just beside the found frame and repurposed rug. €œThey€™re minimalist, but at the same time, whimsical,€ Gevry says of their sculptural light installations. Several of their pieces are made from recovered and upcycled bulbs (from sports stadiums and elsewhere), sometimes combined with LEDs, suspended by tiny stainless-steel cables. The microwires double as both conductors and contributors to the art pieces themselves. While Gevry focuses on the artistry, Gelinas’ experience rigging sailboats brings the technical side to the art-meets-lighting equation.

Light installations, carpets and furniture are interspersed throughout the space. Sun’s ‘Chair sketch #1’ is paired with two of Salari’s circular rugs (the one hanging is by Michal Cole and made of both Tibetan wool and Chinese silk). In the evening, Gelinas and Gevry’s ‘Orbs’ will cast their colours on the wall.

In another area, Sun's €˜Chair Sketch #2€™ is placed atop a stack of rugs, while Umbra & Lux's €˜Bubble Clouds€™ hover above. For the chair, Sun was inspired by the recent resurgence of DIY Furniture, while Gevry has long been inspired by Vancouver skies. All arranged together, the pieces create a whimsically immersive scene.

Sun’s ‘Urbanist low chair’ and ‘Boardwalk floor lamp’, Salari’s ‘African Selected’ HARO TEPPICHE rug, and in the corner, Umbra & Lux’s ‘Dancing Candles’.

Sun has also included his own at-home chair and a white oak bench placed at the centre of the space. It was last-minute project, Sun says, akin to his interest for museum benches (something he tends to photograph). And while the rest of their light installations are suspended, atop the wood counter, Gevry has placed one of her more recent projects. €˜Dandelions€™ is constructed from LEDs and discarded medical bottles that she recovers, cleans and repurposes. Like Umbra & Lux’s other pieces, they’re a fusion of artistry and practical technology. Together, the harmony of furniture, wool, carpet and sculptural lighting is an escape to an imaginative unknown.

Friday was opening night, but through October 8 the space is open, no registration needed, for 40 guests at a time, with COVID-19 safety measures. 

THE DETAILS

Home from Afar: A world of wool, light and forms awaits you

October 2-8, 2020 (closed October 5)

285 East 1st Avenue 

View the details here or learn more about live micro-events at IDSVancouver.com