Beautiful & Useful Tiles, Textiles, and Rugs I'm no austere minimalist or Spartan modernist; on the contrary, I love more. I just love the right more. A carefully considered acquisition of an enormous, centuries-old Persian Heriz rug is a large investment and also a commitment to ongoing proper care and responsibility. The beauty and utility of these Turkish-Iranian masterpieces with intricate patterning and soft vegetable-dyed hues is worth, to my eye, maybe twice whatever the sticker price might be. Hand-knotted rugs and carpets--whether paisley and Persian, floral and Oriental, or striated and Berber--are basic, elemental. They soften and warm any floor and add dimension and texture, which makes them fellow travelers in thebest sense of the term. They can be unrolled true to a room's shape or in any asymmetrical manner that appeals. They can be re-rolled and moved and unrolled again and give identity to all subsequent rooms they anchor.

Their beauty lasts; the patina of age and use only contributes to their allure, along with exposure to light and perhaps spilled wine and saltwater dripping from sunny hair. I'm sold on them! The bigger the better. They pay dividends for decades. So do the smaller pieces of textile, weaving, tapestry, drapery, and organic fabrics that I seek out around the world and acquire for clients. Again, textiles have absolute utility as treatments for doors and windows and insulating artifacts adorning walls or even ceilings. They beautifully cast color, texture, and pattern over wooden furnishings and can instantly bring otherwise anonymous surroundings to life. Textile arts are versatile and can transition from use to use, and that is their true genius. Expertly selected fabrics appear everywhere--on lampshades, valences, table runners, headboards and canopies, cushions and poufs.

They may seem disposable by virtue of their size and lack of heft or consequence. But they endure and persist, and there is always room in your next life for Thai silks, Moroccan weavings, printed Irish linens, Peruvian appliqué, and Iranian velvet. My favorite example of the simultaneity of beautifulness and usefulness in the domestic sphere is set tile--whether accented simple pavers or jewel-like intricate mosaics. The tiles themselves can be staggeringly beautiful as individual pieces of art, while the artful setting of tile can in itself deliver overwhelming impact, with unexpected patterns and geometries revealing themselves upon repeated viewings.