A landscape can become a texture, a memory, turn into colour and into a work of art, finding a new form in everyday life. It is from this interweaving that Hill Country was born, the collection of rugs created by American designer Sara Story together with Christopher Farr. Three designs bring contemporary art, the geometries of Texas and the designer’s personal memories into dialogue, creating surfaces where interior design meets artistic research.

Founder of her own studio in 2003 and included in the Architectural Digest AD100 list in 2026, Sara Story has built a design language that connects interiors, architecture and art. In her work, colours, materials and proportions are not isolated elements, but tools for defining the atmosphere of a space. With Hill Country, this research moves to the floor, transforming the rug from a mere accessory into an element capable of giving rhythm and character to a room.

The collection stems from a deep bond with Texas, where the designer grew up, and from an imagination nourished since childhood by contact with art. Her mother, a curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, gave her an early familiarity with contemporary art, destined to become a constant presence in her practice. Alongside memories of Houston come those of Marfa, a town in West Texas where the essential landscape, the intense light and the work of the Judd Foundation offer a visual point of reference.

The collection’s most evident artistic reference is Spider, the rug that reworks the imagery of French-American artist Louise Bourgeois and her famous 1996 sculpture. Having grown up visiting the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Story found in Bourgeois’s work a tension that also runs through her own project: that between strength and fragility.

It is not a matter of reproducing a sculpture in another material, but of translating its character through design. Spider’s sinuous lines seem to move freely across the surface, forming an irregular texture whose perception changes with distance. From afar, the pattern appears as an abstract composition; up close, the movement of the line and its almost gestural nature emerge. The rug is no longer just a backdrop on which to arrange furniture and objects, but a visual presence that dialogues with its surroundings.

If Spider stems from an artistic reference, Landscape and Grid look instead to the shape of the Texan terrain. Seen from above, the landscape becomes a set of fields, boundaries and geometric surfaces: a vision that Sara Story translates into graphic patterns, playing with scale and with the way forms organise themselves in space.

The palette, too, helps evoke the territory without turning it into a literal representation. The four colours, Texas Sky, Limestone, Cacti and Texas Rose, recall the sky, the stone, the vegetation and the pinkish hues of the landscape. Tones that seem to absorb light and give it back in a softer form, suited to coexisting with different materials and styles. The collaboration with Christopher Farr is part of a body of research that, since 1988, has connected textile tradition with contemporary experimentation. The company has worked with international artists, architects and designers, developing projects in which the rug takes on a role close to that of a graphic work or an artistic composition.

In Hill Country, this approach meets Sara Story’s method, which considers interiors as a set of elements in relation to one another. The result does not rely only on decorative impact, but on an object’s ability to alter the perception of a space through proportions, colours and surfaces.

The collection is designed to fit into contemporary settings as well as more traditional interiors, without imposing a single way of furnishing. The designs can define a room or accompany furniture and artworks already in place, introducing an element of contrast or chromatic continuity.

With Hill Country, Sara Story thus brings to textile design a personal archive made of places, artistic encounters and memories. Texas is not told through recognisable images, but through sensations translated into forms and colours.