Sculptor Finds Creative Use for Langhorne Carpets Jacquards!

Activity at our mill seems to increase in autumn. This season is no exception: Langhorne Carpets family has been busy making our new Pixels, awaiting the installation of a new historic reproduction in a grand government building, and ramping up our collaborations with cutting-edge designers.

Still, we wanted to stop to recognize the creativity of longtime Morrow family friend Edward Murphy, a Buckingham, Pennsylvania-based artist who re-purposed a box of our hand-punched cardboard Jacquards in his studio.

Murphy is a sculptor known for his exploration and manipulation of geometric shapes, and his use of found natural objects such as bark and old wood. He shares studio space with his wife, a painter. The couple works side by side in a late-19th century blacksmith’s barn on their countryside property. Years ago, Ed brought home a box of unused Jacquards—the traditional, rectangular hole-perforated cards that run through our looms, dictating the pattern of each of our carpets—from the mill, envisioning using them for a future project. For eight years, those Jacquards sat idle. Then he decided to renovate the barn, turn the second floor into an office, and use the cards as a window treatment.

A large window looks southwesterly onto the artists’ property, offering a stunning view of nearby farms. But this summer was a hot one. The Murphys needed relief from the sun streaming into their office. That’s when Ed remembered his already-strung cards. “I just flashed on it. The cards were exactly the right size,” he recalled. He screwed them in place, and, behold: “A beautiful pattern of dots that are just random enough let in just enough light, and disperses the pattern into the room.”

Langhorne Carpets applauds our friend Ed Murphy’s creative reuse—and always welcomes creative thinkers and makers to our Penndel, Bucks County mill for tours and inspiration.