Madeline Weinrib Debuts a Pop-Up in NYC
Madeline Weinrib—international designer, shopper and collector—introduces a pop-up in NYC, featuring her travel-inspired finds
Oct. 8, 2015 11:11 am ET
TRAVEL TREASURES | Federico de Vera and Madeline Weinrib at her NYC headquarters Photo: Frances Tulk-Hart for WSJ. Magazine
WHEN RENOWNED textile and rug designer Madeline Weinrib was growing up in the ’60s and ’70s in Westchester County, New York, she never ventured much beyond New York City, where her family made an annual pilgrimage. But after visiting a boyfriend in Italy while she was in college, she says, “I got the travel bug bad.”
Today Weinrib regularly explores Turkey, India, Morocco and Nepal to work with artisans and find inspiration for her textile designs, often contemporary adaptations of traditional patterns, especially ikats, from around the world. Fans include fashion designer Georgina Chapman, Brazilian interior designer Sig Bergamin and artist Hunt Slonem.
A de Vera design for Weinrib’s pop-up Photo: Frances Tulk-Hart for WSJ. Magazine
Indeed, in the nearly two decades since Weinrib started her eponymous, multimillion-dollar company, travel has become integral to her practice. “When I took motifs and decorative patterns from my travels is when I found my voice as a designer,” Weinrib says over lunch near ABC Carpet & Home, the Manhattan design mecca (founded by her grandfather) and one of the main retail outlets for her products.
Often traveling with Weinrib is her close friend and fellow New Yorker Federico de Vera, the jewelry and objet designer whose work is beloved by Bruce Weber, Kate Moss, Damien Hirst and Sir Paul Smith. Weinrib and de Vera were introduced by their mutual friend Renée Price, the director of Manhattan’s Neue Galerie, who often joins their journeys.
The friends’ first trip together was to Colombia, in 2009, where de Vera has volunteered as a teacher at an escuela de artes in Bogotá and has found inspiration and sources for his products. “We’re all big flea market shoppers, and all three of us collect a lot,” Weinrib says, adding that they also love antiques shops.
In Cartagena, for example, the friends ambled into El Arcón, an antiques store on Calle del Campo Santo in the San Diego neighborhood, where Weinrib spotted a still-life sculpture with apples, bananas, pineapples, grapes and pears made of Peruvian silver. De Vera and Price recall how Weinrib immediately gravitated toward the fruit bowl, which now decorates her company’s showroom in New York’s Flatiron District. Contrasting Weinrib’s taste with his own, de Vera says, “She likes bold pieces, and I like understated.”
De Vera admits they provoke each other’s purchases. “It’s like, ‘If you’re not going to buy it, I’m going to buy it,’ ” he says. Price puts it another way: “I think we give each other courage to go for things. You always need a friend next to you when you are splurging.”
Lacquerware by Weinrib exclusively for Barneys Photo: Frances Tulk-Hart for WSJ. Magazine
Now anyone can buy a selection of Weinrib’s worldly wares. This fall, she is curating a pop-up shop at Barneys Madison Avenue called A World of Influence, which will sell a variety of antiques and flea market finds from her personal collection—some reworked by her own hand—including many from her travels, with and without de Vera and Price.
Weinrib is also commissioning new, limited-edition pieces from several artisans, including de Vera, who designed vases that are based on a Steuben from the early 1900s and made by a master glass blower. The vases are available in celadon, slate blue, tobacco, olive and white—all with a cinnabar-red rim.
Also for the pop-up: Munnu the Gem Palace—whose owner and designer Weinrib befriended on an early trip to India—is contributing one-of-a-kind bowls made of semiprecious stone; the luxe stationer Connor is producing a special line of writing papers; and Weinrib will offer several new textiles, trays and boxes (many designed just for Barneys) in a largely black-and-white palette.
On the eclecticism of her pop-up, Weinrib says, “I didn’t put this together like a retailer,” noting that it is hard to part with some of the finds that she has lived with for years. “I can always hope no one buys them.”