NinaJohnson

When rug manufacturer Odabashian asked Emmett Moore to create his first line of carpets, the Miami-based designer and sculptor looked back to the basics: checks and stripes. “I always start with the archetypes and break those down,” he explains. This time, he meant that quite literally. “I didn’t like how rigid these motifs were. It was counter to the material.” So he printed out images of patterns, laid them out on the ground, and physically wore them down, stomping on the paper and letting cars drive over the scraps. (“It was kind of liberat-ing.”) A few proved unusable, but most he scanned, pieced back together into digital collages, and overlaid with stock photos of traditional stone flooring like marble or terrazzo. “After they were damaged, they had a much more natural feel,” says Moore, who debuted five one-of-a-kind rugs, each a work of art, with Nina Johnson gallery at the Collective Design fair in March.

 —H.M.