Rhyme is a multi-disciplinary interior design, art advisory and design manufacturer based in New York City. Rhyme founder Claire McGovern has designed residences, spas, restaurant and office interiors, curated art and design installations and collaborated with many talented designers and artists. Born and educated in Dublin, she has worked as an interior designer, curator and art advisor, embracing the influences of West Coast California to East Coast neoclassical and contemporary style along with her Irish and European heritage. Her entrepreneurial days began in 2002 with an acclaimed art and design gallery evolving into the multi-disciplinary practice she operates today from Brooklyn. Client & company affiliations have included Lexus, Google, Facebook, Design Within Reach and experimental, award winning New York City based lighting design manufacturers. In 2017 she began to realize her own sustainable luxury design collection made entirely by hand in Ireland, only to uncover a collapsed Irish woolen market and a global fibre industry in need of reform. Encompassing a series of customizable Irish wool carpets and tapestries, Rhyme Studio's first lighting design collection will follow next, expanding on a theme of high quality and responsible Irish craftsmanship.
"Exciting Designs in Breathtaking Colours"- Dr. Jennifer Goff, Curator of the Eileen Gray Collection & Furniture, National Museum of Ireland.
We believe all worthy design is sustainable and based on a great story. Composed of traditionally spun and hand tufted Irish wool, we approach carpet & tapestry creation as customizable and sculptural floor art. With responsible craft and provenance as founding principles, we source genuine Irish wool from the spectacular west coast of Ireland. Fleece is sent for processing and spinning to historic Irish woolen mills and dyed by hand using only natural and non toxic dyes. We also prioritize the use of quality wool fiber in its most sustainable and natural state, undyed. Yarn is delivered to our rural Irish studio to be tufted into design by the hand of a master craftsman. One carpet design can take weeks to perfect with lead times beginning at 7-8 weeks
The Insula Series is inspired by 7th Century Irish Art and illuminated manuscripts, The Trinity Series celebrates the concept of “rug as sculpture” and triangular forms. Presenting wool in its most sustainable form (undyed), The OM Series is derived from a 1600 year old “tree” alphabet called Ogham and a carpet or tapestry design that can spell just about any word. The surface sculpted Modernity series is a tribute to Irish designer Eileen Gray and Kasimir Malevich and Báinín (undyed white yarn) features the original Aran Sweater yarn; pure, organically farmed, heritage Galway wool that is today no longer used in the making of this classic icon of Irish style. Real Irish Wool is the company's first textile & cushion design collection.
The Rhyme Studio goal is a circular production model for a truly responsible design collection and a percentage of sales are devoted to supporting Irish sheep farmers. . Following years of research for sustainable materials, we made our first Irish wool carpet prototype only to discover that while it is a highly resilient yarn perfectly suited to carpet, tapestry and textiles, it has been all but forsaken by contemporary rug & knitwear makers.
A miracle fiber that is virtually unrivaled, our wool is renewable, traceable, resilient, biodegradable, air purifying, sound absorbing and breathable. In the USA carpet industry alone more than 2.5 million tons of synthetic, chemically toxic material is sent to landfill each year while barely 5% of carpet discarded is recycled. Once the fiber of choice, perfected by nature, wool today accounts for only 2% of the current needs of the global textile industry while resource draining cotton or dirty synthetics dominate current global usage, have no credible recycling concept and mostly wind up in landfill or shed micro plastics that flow into our oceans. Our Irish wool is traceable. We source high quality fleece from small supplier organic sheep farmers who raise happy sheep that frequently graze upon land not viable for agriculture. In 2020 the market for Irish wool officially collapsed and our design studio is currently the sole entity (inside or outside of Ireland) promoting the use of this native wool. An environmental tragedy persists as many sheep farmers the world over dump or burn freshly shorn wool deemed unacceptable by a fashion industry that will only trade in merino or fossil fuel based synthetic fibers.
Over the last half century, mass production of resource draining cotton or petrochemical based synthetics have transformed the global fiber market. Within the European Union alone, there is considerable wool waste and a failure to recognize the multi-faceted renewable and biodegradable qualities of this earliest known natural textile. At Rhyme Studio it is our wish for the design world to put nothing out that does not give back in equal measure. We call attention to the unnecessary waste, the decline of the global market for wool and the environmental crisis facing the industry. Carbon sinking, renewable & biodegradable wool fiber, not synthetic and fossil fuel dependent fiber is Nature's way and has a multitude of uses that extend way beyond our customizable carpet & textiles. Irish wool is a precious resource that can make a luxurious, high quality and timeless heirloom design and we welcome all designers to create with our wool.
Rhyme Studio is a sustainable interior design, art advisory and design manufacturer based in New York City with a production studio in rural Ireland.