Textile lines (and websites) as beautiful and inspiring as this one don’t pop up every day — so when they do it’s easy to savor every pattern, color combination, and artistic flourish with extra relish.

Via Architectural Digest.

For a shot of pattern and color inspiration check out the textile section of Santa Fe’s Shiprock Gallery, where an abundance of Navajo blankets, runners, rugs, and cloths are displayed. As is proven by the chief blanket pictured above, “contemporary” design carries a trans-cultural passport.

On Wednesday Sotheby’s sold a 17th Century Persian “Sickle-Leaf” carpet for $33,765,000 — decimating the auction estimate of $5-7 million and easily setting an all-time record for “most expensive carpet ever sold”. Read more about the sale here, and watch a video of the auction here.

The Swedish gallery Modern African Art has produced a series of carpets that are designed by contemporary African artists and manufactured in Tibet. To view the full collection of “Africa On The Floor” click here.

Luru Home produces pillows, table linens, and accessories with striking patterns in indigo, black, white, and cream. Their aesthetic is directly linked to the Chinese tradition of Nankeen dying, which they write about here.

Via House Beautiful.

There’s very limited biographical information available for Vernal Bogren Smith online, but her surreal batik work is enough to prove her artistic credentials. The Textile Museum in Washington D.C. is currently showing a few of her pieces within a larger exhibition titled Out of Southeast Asia: Art That Sustains. Additional images can be found with a quick Google image search.

Luxury fashion house Hermes has teamed up with the Italian fabric manufacturer Dedar to produce their first line of upholstery fabrics, for sale by the yard. While many of the patterns are distinctly “Hermes” others follow very different flights of fancy — like “Beloved India” pictured above. As with all things Dedar, the quality is superb — especially the cottons which carry a crisp auditory “snap” when flung out or folded.

Comma Workshop fuses text and textile into quilts that are minimalist and unabashedly “crafted” at the same time. The concept, design, and written content are all the work of Kerry Larkin who founded the company in 2010. Individual quilts are made to order and are produced by a network of quilters in Colorado who move at their own pace, taking in as much or as little Comma work as they like. For more about Larkin and the company click here.

Design Milk is currently featuring a really interesting interview with Aurelie Tu, the woman behind CraftedSystems. Not only are Tu’s products beautiful and innovative, her production process is also a testament to how contemporary design and socially (and environmentally) responsible manufacturing can harmoniously co-exist.

You may not find the “hot” new pattern of the season at Place Textiles — but you will find upholstery fabrics that are elegant, durable, environmentally conscious, and trend-proof. Their in-depth primer on “green” fabrics is just one example of the care and detail Place brings to their work.