Cream Striped Cowhide Rug

From a distance it reads like sawn timber laid crosswise: a cream striped cowhide rug, South American cattle hide cut into bands and joined so the stripes run the short way across 170 × 240 cm (5'7" × 7'10"). One of one, with the banding set by what the skins allowed.

Stripes in hide are never quite parallel the way printed stripes are, since each band is a strip off a different animal carrying its own grain. Cream is the base and the drift between strips supplies the rhythm — a warmer band, then a cooler one, then one with a faint natural marking still in it. Seen from above the piece reads as texture; seen from a low chair it resolves into separate bands.

Cut and sewn in the South American hide trade, from cattle raised there. Cream is the least forgiving surface in this catalog: it takes a mark and keeps it, which makes this a piece for a sunroom or a bedroom rather than a front hall. There is no pile whatever, so nothing crushes, nothing sheds, and a broom does more good than a vacuum. Send it out for dry cleaning when sweeping stops being enough.

• South American cattle hide, cut into bands and stitched into stripes.
• Cream throughout, with the natural difference between hides left in.
• 170 × 240 cm (5'7" × 7'10"), about four square meters.
• The stripes run across the width rather than along the length.
• No pile: sweep rather than beat it, and nothing will crush.
• Pale skin marks; better in a sunroom or bedroom than by the door.
• Dry cleaning.
• One assembly, unrepeatable.

A pale floor is what a room with too much furniture on it needs, and hide supplies one without adding another pattern.