Quilting and Cowhide Marry in Kyle Bunting’s New Rug Collection With His Mom

ProductQuilting and Cowhide Marry in Kyle Bunting’s New Rug Collection With His MomThe idea behind Kyle Bunting’s latest rug launch? Mama knows best

By Jessica Ritz

May 5, 2022

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Kyle Bunting and his mom, Peggy, stand with the Whirlwind pattern cowhide rug.Photography courtesy Kyle Bunting

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Whether with photographer Douglas Friedman or AD100 designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard, the cowhide run artisan Kyle Bunting says that collaborations have taught his company “how to get new work from a new perspective.” But this season introduces a more personal one than many of the others, thanks to a new design partner: His mother, Peggy.

Aptly set to launch on Mother’s Day, the Stateside collection stitches together several familial ties. As Kyle tells it, his father, Jim, a master cowhide artist and craftsman in Texas, was always an inspiration, but Peggy served a key role in the founding of the bespoke rug company in 2001. “My dad always thought it was a western motif business,” he says. Peggy—who is 83 years old, an avid painter and quilter, and hails from a family of woodworkers in North Carolina—quietly understood the more expansive vision all along.

Kyle Bunting and his mother, Peggy, among the Stateside collection.

Photo: Travis Bell courtesy Kyle Bunting

When Jim passed away in December 2020, Kyle was eager to help his mother find a new expressive outlet. The next steps were a no-brainer: Peggy could channel decades of her quilting expertise and apply the visual concepts to rug making. The result is what Kyle has called a “cowhide love child.”

Mother and son spent the following six months poring over books, attending quilting shows, and “sitting around with little old ladies” in Kyle’s studio in Austin to develop prototypes. As a creative challenge, Kyle proposed one parameter to serve as a through-line between the cowhide and quilting media. Workshop artisans would be required to “use all the remnant materials that we have from our regular work—much like quilting—and create interesting new designs,” he explains.

The Crossroads pattern rug by Kyle Bunting.

Photo: Travis Bell courtesy Kyle Bunting

The Compass pattern rug by Kyle Bunting.

Photo: Travis Bell courtesy Kyle Bunting

The research and experimentation produced six kaleidoscopic patterns in spritely colorways, now dubbed Carousel, Compass, Crossroads, Fancy, Lady, and Whirlwind. The Stateside collection, with its six buoyantly dynamic rug designs, is a marvelous ode to American quilting heritage and its ability to sustainably marry functional and decorative needs.

Akin to traditional handmade quilted blankets, the design concepts for each cowhide rug in the collection derive from inspired narratives. The Crossroads pattern, for instance, gleans from the poetry of Robert Frost and Peggy’s attachment to the Pisgah Covered Bridge in Asheboro, North Carolina. Meanwhile, the Compass pattern is an homage to the family’s move to Texas and what she calls “a metaphor for the love and trust I put in my husband to take us there.”

The collection uses cowhide scraps in a new way, just as quilting often repurposes fabric remnants.

Photo: Travis Bell courtesy Kyle Bunting

When the designs came to fruition, it was time to chat business. “We need to talk about [royalties],” Kyle told his mother. Regardless of its seriousness, the proposition was a nonstarter. “She said, ‘I wouldn’t take one, ’cause I don’t need it,’” Bunting recounts. “Moms at their best are, of course, like that.” Peggy had just one request for her son: On photoshoot day, “just tell me where to be so I can get my hair done.”