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Hokanson, the Houston-based source for superior custom carpets and rugs, expands the kaleidoscope of design possibilities for the floor. Founded by Larry Hokanson in 1987 as a solo operation, today the company has full-service showrooms in New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston, as well as production facilities in Canada and Thailand. The firm enjoys a sterling reputation for both invention and luxury: the house specializes in ornate traditional patterns that reinterpret the lessons of decorative history, worked in exotic yarns. It also produces sophisticated contemporary designs in complicated and unexpected combinations of textures and fibers.
“Design is my passion. I love it, and take a very strong hand in it,” says Hokanson. So the firm’s collection of 500 standard patterns attests. Because Hokanson is a custom source, the existing archive is essentially a starter kit for creativity: each floor covering can be had with variations, in any size and combination of fibers and colors. Prior to production, original designs are rendered on computer or, in the case of highly intricate designs, in maquettes hand painted by Hokanson’s five staff artists—with yarn samples for color matching attached.
Hokanson delights in the many exclusive weaves that he and his staff have devised over the years to show off the company’s favored materials’ palette of wool, silk, linen, viscose, and sisal. Custom possibilities range from super-thin, velvety and pliable tufted carpets to Axminsters and, now, flat weave rugs. (Hokanson, whose passion for Russian history informs his considerable glee as a collector of Imperial Russian porcelain, among other things, has given each of his weaves a Russian patronymic.) All Hokanson floor coverings are produced in the 80-person Canadian factory and the 800-person Thai operation.
Hokanson acquired his formidable expertise in floor coverings during an 18-year tenure with one of the industry’s celebrated leaders. Two weeks after launching his new company, he received his first commission—custom rugs for Saul and Gayfryd Steinberg’s 37,000-square-foot Park Avenue residence. Thanks to the late Mark Hampton, another of the company’s early notable commissions was a new rug for the Oval Office of the first Bush White House.
Today, Hokanson has the fastest production time for custom tufted rugs in the North America: the firm’s textural designs are custom colored and custom sized, and manufactured in ten weeks, a schedule that includes the dyeing of the yarn. Hokanson also produces the industry’s thinnest custom hand-tufted rugs, specializing in thin rugs that have an old feel. As Hokanson says, “We believe that one of our main strengths has been the ability to produce instant heirlooms. The latest addition to Hokanson’s bevy of instant heirlooms is the Brenna Collection of 40 silk-and-wool rugs. The designs in the Brenna Collection are notable for bracing geometries, many descended from the great pattern languages of earlier periods, as well as for intriguing combinations of cut and loop pile and raised and carved surfaces.
“Design is my passion. I love it, and take a very strong hand in it,” says Hokanson. So the firm’s collection of 500 standard patterns attests. Because Hokanson is a custom source, the existing archive is essentially a starter kit for creativity: each floor covering can be had with variations, in any size and combination of fibers and colors. Prior to production, original designs are rendered on computer or, in the case of highly intricate designs, in maquettes hand painted by Hokanson’s five staff artists—with yarn samples for color matching attached.
Hokanson delights in the many exclusive weaves that he and his staff have devised over the years to show off the company’s favored materials’ palette of wool, silk, linen, viscose, and sisal. Custom possibilities range from super-thin, velvety and pliable tufted carpets to Axminsters and, now, flat weave rugs. (Hokanson, whose passion for Russian history informs his considerable glee as a collector of Imperial Russian porcelain, among other things, has given each of his weaves a Russian patronymic.) All Hokanson floor coverings are produced in the 80-person Canadian factory and the 800-person Thai operation.
Hokanson acquired his formidable expertise in floor coverings during an 18-year tenure with one of the industry’s celebrated leaders. Two weeks after launching his new company, he received his first commission—custom rugs for Saul and Gayfryd Steinberg’s 37,000-square-foot Park Avenue residence. Thanks to the late Mark Hampton, another of the company’s early notable commissions was a new rug for the Oval Office of the first Bush White House.
Today, Hokanson has the fastest production time for custom tufted rugs in the North America: the firm’s textural designs are custom colored and custom sized, and manufactured in ten weeks, a schedule that includes the dyeing of the yarn. Hokanson also produces the industry’s thinnest custom hand-tufted rugs, specializing in thin rugs that have an old feel. As Hokanson says, “We believe that one of our main strengths has been the ability to produce instant heirlooms. The latest addition to Hokanson’s bevy of instant heirlooms is the Brenna Collection of 40 silk-and-wool rugs. The designs in the Brenna Collection are notable for bracing geometries, many descended from the great pattern languages of earlier periods, as well as for intriguing combinations of cut and loop pile and raised and carved surfaces.
