Textiles & Technology

By Carole Sloan -- Home Textiles Today, 5/23/2005 12:00:00 AM

New York — —

New York —Home textiles are increasingly reflecting the impact of high-technology techniques across the broad vista of home furnishings in terms of design and materials.

This was evident last week at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Javits Convention Center here where bedding, decorative pillows and rugs were among the home furnishings featured from entrepreneurs as well as established companies.

At the same time, designers are emphasizing high-end quality with hand-woven silks for pillows and bedding, rugs and pillows of exotic fibers like alpaca and hand prints for a range of textiles products.

Among the more interesting was the varied end use of polyurethane from handbags to decorative pillows to apparel items at Andrea Valentini and the array of water jet, computer-cut rugs and decorative fabrics at Liora Manne.

And at the other extreme were decorative pillows of hand-woven silk at SiwThaiSilk and alpaca handcrafted pillows and rugs at Rosemary Hallgarten.

Overall, the home textiles offerings reflected the general industry direction to strong color, lots of texture and a surprising amount of prints.