Whether with photographer Douglas Friedman or AD100 designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard, the cowhide run artisan Kyle Bunting says that collaborations have taught his company “how to get new work from a new perspective.” But this season introduces a more personal one than many of the others, thanks to a new design partner: His mother, Peggy.
Aptly set to launch on Mother’s Day, the Stateside collection stitches together several familial ties. As Kyle tells it, his father, Jim, a master cowhide artist and craftsman in Texas, was always an inspiration, but Peggy served a key role in the founding of the bespoke rug company in 2001. “My dad always thought it was a western motif business,” he says. Peggy—who is 83 years old, an avid painter and quilter, and hails from a family of woodworkers in North Carolina—quietly understood the more expansive vision all along.
When Jim passed away in December 2020, Kyle was eager to help his mother find a new expressive outlet. The next steps were a no-brainer: Peggy could channel decades of her quilting expertise and apply the visual concepts to rug making. The result is what Kyle has called a “cowhide love child.”
Mother and son spent the following six months poring over books, attending quilting shows, and “sitting around with little old ladies” in Kyle’s studio in Austin to develop prototypes. As a creative challenge, Kyle proposed one parameter to serve as a through-line between the cowhide and quilting media. Workshop artisans would be required to “use all the remnant materials that we have from our regular work—much like quilting—and create interesting new designs,” he explains.
The research and experimentation produced six kaleidoscopic patterns in spritely colorways, now dubbed Carousel, Compass, Crossroads, Fancy, Lady, and Whirlwind. The Stateside collection, with its six buoyantly dynamic rug designs, is a marvelous ode to American quilting heritage and its ability to sustainably marry functional and decorative needs.
