Even now, the thing that I still think of is the care and attention. The love, almost, embedded in these undeniable works of art. Most people pass them by, eyes fixed forward, not down. But not me. To me, it’s these intricate things under our very feet which hold some crazy fascination.
US carpets.
Not all carpets in the USA, of course, but those with an especially taxing job: providing the undersurface for countless trade shows, conventions, conferences and expos.
I was first conscious of convention-centre US carpets on a business trip in 2009. Part of my job is to represent my company at global conferences. When in the USA, these tend to be in one of the dual heartlands of the US conference circuit: Las Vegas or Orlando.
I dread these places. Not just the conference centres, but both of these cities in their entirety.
There is, of course, a curious fascination with Las Vegas. Rising directly out of the desert, it’s been a magnet for gamblers for decades. It’s a natural place to have large conferences, and the hotels supplement their gambling income with a steady stream of weary conventioneers. These corporate ants gather to talk about truly revolutionary advances in skincreams, new tax policies, fighting hackers, and climate change. (This last one grates particularly; nobody ever decreased their carbon footprint by flying to a city which is built in a desert, heats or cools all its rooms to an overly hot or cold temperature, which imports white tigers and dolphins for the amusement of its clientele, and which is specifically designed to encourage consumption.)
But still, they come.
Orlando, on the other hand, is beloved by millions as the home of Disney World. Except that Disney World isn’t in Orlando, it’s in a totally separate zoned-off enclave 100% owned by the Disney Corporation. When most people go ‘to Orlando’, they are actually going to Lake Buena Vista. The actual metropolis of Orlando is a somewhat run-down community, and the last time I was there the downtown area was littered with closed shops, broken windows and a demeanour undeserving of its past. All of this, really, because the money tourists and conference-goers spend ‘in Orlando’ actually goes to Disney. They have a brilliant monopoly on the place. The buses are owned and run by Disney. The company contracted to launder the millions of sheets and towels soiled each year is owned by Disney; gas stations, hotels, restaurants, tacky plastic souvenir shops – they are all on Disney’s land. Disney bought the thousands of acres of swampland outside Orlando, in a cunning subterfuge so the public, and the existing land-owners, wouldn’t know who was snapping up their land and increase the prices accordingly. Some of the acquiring companies’ names shows great humour, including M.T. Lott Real Estate Investments.
Orlando, like Vegas, fairly heaves with conference centres. Every hotel has one bigger than the last, and there is a truly enormous ‘central’ convention centre (the second-largest in the USA, being out-conventioned slightly by Chicago). Like Vegas, the conference titles are inspiring. Who wouldn’t want to check out “Get Traction”, “Exploring Data Integrity”, “State of the Telecom Management Vendor Symposium”, or the ever-popular “Preparing and Defending Tax Returns for the Legal Marijuana Industry”.
But here’s the thing. Nobody except me, as far as I can tell, ever stops to appreciate the works of art under their feet while at these conferences. They’re more focused on signing up new converts for their company’s port-scanning service.
In 2009, I started taking photos. Partly, it was to show my family just how garish these things were. But after a while it developed into a mild obsession. Was the next conference hotel going to display The Best Carpet Yet?
These carpets see a lot of wear. A LOT of wear. Most of the conferences I attend have around 1000 attendees. All of them walk past the central areas around 10 times a day, for 3 days in a week. They walk through the hotel lobby. They walk through the hotel casino, frequent the hotel restaurant, and through the corridors to the pool. And my 1000-person conference constitutes somewhere around 20-25% of the capacity of most of these hotels. That’s a lot of footfall for the carpets.
And remember, the carpets have to successfully camouflage not just the dirt from people’s shoes, and the wear from the pressure of walking, but many many other things. Every bodily fluid, and that’s just for starters.
Brown
I once did ‘booth duty’ 20 feet away from an ice-cream freezer. The conference attendees, having had their oversized lunch with minimal nutritional content, had a real treat in store: a choice of 3 types of ice-cream, to which they could help themselves from the freezer. I saw a guy pick out an ice-cream on a stick, which was covered in a chocolate shell. Like a no-brand cheap Magnum. He took the wrapper off, discarded it in the bin, walked 20 feet towards my company’s booth, and at that point the chocolate shell fell off. Despite turning around and trying to retrieve it quickly, the person behind him had already squashed it into the carpet. A great brown chocolate stain in normal conditions. But absolutely invisible on this carpet:
10 minutes later, after I was finished talking with Interested Prospect at our booth, I genuinely couldn’t find the spot where the chocolate had met its death. I tell you, these things are a work of magic.
Let’s consume a few more, together.
Gold Lode Runner
Is this gold bars, interlaced? Or maybe a gold version of the Lode Runner standard brick layout. Either way, the designer here got good return for his/her money. Once you’ve found the Copy and Paste shortcut keys, you use the first once, and the second for the rest of the day. Job done.
Brown Stairs
Stairs add a new frisson of energy to many carpets. Such as this gem, formed from a mostly dark brown background with a floral motif in brown and dark yellow. I particularly like the way the flowers spill from one stair to the next, exactly mimicking the passage of a plate of food, dropped while going up to the lobby cafe from the subterranean kitchen. Which is exactly the use for this set of stairs, captured in a Memphis hotel.
Chocolate Conveyor
This sample comes to you from the ‘let it all out’ school of creativity. The artist has concentrated on an industrial theme: the inner workings of a chocolate factory. One can clearly see the diamond-shaped conveyor belt grooves into which the chocolates are slotted, as they move towards the final cocoa-dusting stage. Unfortunately, there is a jam in the mechanism, and the white chocolate base oozes out of the moulds, creating both an unattractive smear, and a long afternoon for the poor operator on Line 6.
Presidential Shield
Here we see a very early sample for the Presidential Shield of the Republic of Conventiostan, a lush, densely-forested country. Known for its tropical ferns above all else, it is fitting that the President should be represented by such a depiction. I am only grateful that I was able to walk near greatness, atop this proof copy, rendered in a magnificent woven carpet.
Hypno Trance Swirl
What is a ballroom designer to do, when one has a wide, expansive space to cover? Remember that there are a lot of potential situations one needs to foresee. Royal visits, Donny Osmond concerts, the annual meeting of the tax inspectors of New Jersey. How to produce a wide-ranging stunning array for all these occasions? Look no further than the Hypno Trance Swirl motif. Perfect for thrills and spills aplenty. Red wine right down the red bits please – all other wear and tear only allowed in the circular zones.
Cartographic
This is a direct carpetisation of a photograph taken by Felix Baumgartner, on his epic parachute jump from space. We see here the fields of Quadrilateraland from a height of 115,000 ft. You can clearly make out the darker forested areas, and the lighted wheat fields.
What’s the most garish and over-the-top carpet you’ve ever had the fortune to walk on?