Last year, I went to visit my friend Sunny in her beautiful new house in Irvington, New York, and noticed, among the many well-appointed furnishings, a massive rug in her dining room. It was made of a natural fiber comprising spiraling square panels, which produced a diamond-pattern effect that felt both dynamic and grounding in the stately room. I made a mental note to ask her about it the next time I was in the market for a new floor covering.
I didn’t think much of it until a few months ago, when I started noticing the same style of rug in design magazines and on the Instagram accounts of stylish people including Daphne Javitch (in the Los Angeles home she shares with her husband, Pali Xisto Cornelsen) and Julie O’Rourke of clothing brand Rudy Jude. A couple Strategist editors also noticed the rugs popping up in their feeds, including at Stissing House restaurant in Hudson Valley, so I asked Sunny about where she got hers.
Turns out it’s the “Original Rug,” a handmade seagrass rug from Rush House, a company started in 2020 by Liz Strong and Page Mullins. Sunny first saw it in Architectural Digest and tracked it down because she “loved the price point, especially for such a big rug.” The largest size, 9 by 12 feet, costs $425, which, for comparison, is about a fifth of the price of this Nordic Knots rug (in the same size) I recently wrote about. While rugs made of natural fibers like jute and seagrass are generally more affordable than wool rugs, the economics of this particular designer-approved style make it extra appealing. (Strategist writer Emma Wartzman adds that her mom owns this rug in L.A. and “has a whole thing about how a lot of interior designers use it because it’s pretty affordable in huge sizes.”)
It’s also designed to be customizable. Sunny ordered two and stitched them together herself to create one large rug to fit her dining room. (Rush House sells a sewing kit for $15.) You can also easily remove squares to cut it down to size — or even replace tiles if they get damaged or stained. And similar styles abound. I saw a version in artist Julia Felsenthal’s house — turns out hers is from Lauren Liess’s collaboration with Rugs USA. This one is made from braided jute instead of seagrass also set into spiraling square panels, yielding a flatter, softer effect.
While they won’t feel as soft underfoot as a wool rug, they’re not scratchy either. “It’s not a rug that the kids are going to roll on,” my friend tells me, “but the dog does nap in the dining room from time to time.” For added comfort (and to extend the life of the rug), Rush House recommends using a quarter-inch-thick rug pad designed in a custom color that “blends seamlessly” with the Original style. As for cleaning it, Sunny tells me that vacuuming it is easy enough. “We’ve dropped plenty of food on it, and you wouldn’t notice at all,” she says, “though, to be honest, it’s probably all dropping through the weave onto the rug pad underneath.” (For a deeper clean, you might want to lift the rug and give the pad a good vacuum, too.) Still, it’s a hardy rug: “The dog has puked on the rug multiple times and you absolutely cannot tell.” (She uses a pet spray for that without any issues.)
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