The Aviary at 110th St, Queens

An abbreviated tour of Corona, during Corona

Our newest collection of wool nylon hand tufted rugs isn’t the first collection we’ve designed or released during the pandemic. But it is the first to reflect a new way of living and the rhythms we’ve grown into. This Corona era collection was defined and inspired by the happiness we found in two places in Corona, Queens. 

Both celebrate repetition and unexpected harmony in different ways, which we thought fitting for a collection of repeating pattern motif rugs. 

Louis Armstrong’s House

Repetition is comforting, and in the best cases it can surprise and delight. And find a room that repeats, comforts, surprises and delights like the guest room in Louis Armstrong’s house. Armstrong’s wife Lucille Wilson bought the home without telling her husband and made mortgage payments in secrecy for nearly a year. But once Armstrong moved in he refused to relocate despite Wilson repeating her ploy, making furtive down payments on several homes in more fashionable neighborhoods. She eventually found happiness in frequent, exuberant renovations of their Corona house, where she lived to the end of her days.

The Queens Zoo

Last year we roamed outside for hours in the dead of winter, hunting for pockets where wildlife and city overlapped. The Queens Zoo is an elegant if modest affair in the middle of a large park. Low guilt as far as zoos go, populated by orphaned puma cubs, flightless bald eagles (one knocked out of the sky by an airplane, the other by a hunter), a coyote rescued from Central Park, giant bunnies, a shy donkey. And a spectacular geodesic dome housing the zoo’s aviary. A walkway spirals through the open air dome leading you through treetops; below you can see and hear the highway. Designed by Buckminster Fuller for the 1964 World’s Fair and nestled between the elk exhibit and Grand Central Parkway, the Aviary at 110th St is both nostalgic and futuristic. 

Photography by Clément Pascal