Design
Tom Atton Moore’s hand-tufted rugs
Tom Atton Moore uses an electric tufting gun. The design is based on the petals of a magnolia tree that the designer had recently come upon.
Image courtesy of: The New York Times Style Magazine, photographed by: Benjamin McMahon
Even Tom Atton Moore didn’t think that he would become a rug designer. Just a few short years ago, the London-based designer graduated from the London College of Communication with a degree in illustration. Yearning for an outlet, Tom leaned on his previous loom-weaving experience and sought to increase the scale.
The technique of tufting allowed Tom a pragmatic way to produce larger textile pieces. He designed a crude wooden rug-making frame, watched tutorials on YouTube, and learned through experimentation. He found tufting peaceful… the total opposite of modeling, something he was doing at the time.
An example of something Tom might garner inspiration from…
Image courtesy of: The New York Times Style Magazine, photographed by: Benjamin McMahon
Tom draws inspiration (courtesy of The New York Times) “from more unexpected places, and derive either from an exploration of a specific form or an attempt to document the anxieties of contemporary life reflected back to us through our screens.”
Oftentimes, the designer creates compositions based on screenshots from images he has taken. Tom wants to capture “moments in time;” sometimes is it a person who is the subject and other times, it is an environment to which he feels connected. He clarifies, “Rugs and tapestries tell stories you can look back on in the future. I want to document the world now.”
From 2022’s Los Angeles show at BC called “Eden.” The exciting exhibition spotlighted a number of hand-tufted rugs that were inspired by (courtesy of Surface Magazine) “chemicals swirling at the surface of a countryside pond.”
Image courtesy of: Surface Magazine
While his designs are often inspired by something he photographed on his phone, Tom employs a traditional approach. Different from many other designers, he is involved in each and every stage of the intricate design process.
Tom’s rug are hand-tufted from British-sourced wool that is both soft to the touch and appealing to the eye. His rugs have a familiarity to them that makes them accessible to his expansive clientele. As for those who purchase his special rugs, they are in control of how they want to sdisplay them… sometimes they are hung… the orientation is TBD according to the buyer, and other times they are placed on the floor as essential room anchors.
Tom’s hand-tufted wool textile installations as commissioned by Burberry for their Paris store.
Image courtesy of: Dezeen
This past spring, Tom was commissioned to prepare a number of hand-turfed installations for Burberry’s Paris showroom. Specifically, the pieces were unveiled after Daniel Lee’s (Burberry’s chief creative officer as of late 2022) February debut collection for the British fashion house.
Tom used the design house’s recent rebranding as inspiration; he was ingenious at incorporating pictography of the new equestrian knight logo. In addition, the designer mixed imagery of typical British flora into the colorful design. Familiar with Lee’s work from another fashion house, Tom knew that Lee loved contemporary art. As such, he tailored his designs to factor in that relevant detail.
Hoping to bring forth the brand’s heritage through color, Tom used a palette of colors that Lee included in the collection that debuted at London Fashion Week last spring.
Image courtesy of: Thursd.
The showroom’s windows became beautiful displays of hand-turfed pieces… suspended front and center. Tom used 100% wool yard for the pieces and dyed them to Lee’s preferred colors. In addition to muted tones, blue, red, purple, and green were used, in varying pile heights, to create the eye-grabbing finish.
Relevant to the display was that each piece had a mirror copy of the other side to ensure that the pieces’ undersides were not visible. Furthermore, the floor pieces extended from window to window and across the store’s interior. All of these small details were influenced from plant lives.
Tom realized the importance of referencing the brand’s heritage. Specifically, the logo was inspired by 13th and 14th-century armor displayed at London’s The Wallace Collection. This, along with equestrian knight imagery and British flora was the impetus for his installations’ designs.
About the commission, the designer said (courtesy of Dezeen), “For the showroom, it was very important for me to create an overpowering environment by filling the space with the new colours of the brand to feel like you were stepping into the world of the new Burberry.” We agree that Tom was the perfect choice for this groundbreaking installation.
