ELLE DECO
International Design Awards
In a tribute to the best design of the year, ELLE DECOR salutes the people and the companies that bring style, beauty, and ease to our lives, the ten U.S. winners of the fourth annual ELLE DECO International Design Awards.

Each year since the inception of the ELLE DECO International Design Awards in 2002, the editors of ELLE DECOR have surveyed our world to select the most outstanding talents. As part of the ELLE DECO international family of 21 editions, our job is to chose what we feel to be the very best of all the design work we have seen and admired in the States during the previous 12 months.

The program is designed to recognize global excellence in ten categories: tabletop, wall covering, bedding, fabric, kitchen, furniture, floor covering, lighting, bath, and designer of the year. This fall, the editors of every edition, from Sweden to South Africa, China to Croatia, will announce their own winners; on the pages that follow are our national honorees. In a few months, the editors will winnow the choices to select ten global winners, who will be featured in our April 2006 issue.

We are especially impressed that so many of those chosen work on a small scale and take an artisanal approach to design. And even the larger companies that we have selected often commission singular talents to shape their products and develop their aesthetic. The outstanding work of these designers proves that, even in this era of technological innovation, computer-aided design, and industrial consolidation, the eye and hand of the individual still have a tremendous impact.

Bedding John Robshaw Textiles

Who says sheets have to be white, pillows have to match, patterns have to coordinate, and the bed needs to be an oasis of calm? Not John Robshaw. The textile designer, who travels the world in search of indigenous patterns and rich colors that he can adapt for modern interiors, has brought his global perspective to a staid category. "I started out doing pillows and quilts," he says, "and I finally figured out I might as well try the whole bed."

Inspired by the textile traditions of Southeast Asia that he loves, including wood-block prints, batiks, and ikats, Robshaw created a line that includes pillows, blankets, bed skirts, duvets, and sheets in patterns that are hand-blocked in India onto cottons, linens and silks. "I approached the bed in an open manner," the designer says, "like a free-form collage—mixing lots of colors, stitches, and patterns." The colors range from russet and gold to deep blue and turquoise to coffee and plum; the patterns are both subtle and large-scale, so the mundane task of making the bed becomes a creative endeavor. Says Robshaw, who trained as a painter and once worked as Julian Schnabel's assistant, "Bedding is fun. I think of it as a big canvas that you can fold up and put away."