When I found out that the brains (and hair) behind the superlatively unusual Comb Over Carpet belonged to some creature called Meirav Peled Barzilay, I felt sure the piece must be close to the designer’s heart. In fact, I pictured a somewhat portly, dour, and balding Ukranian man of advancing age. What a pleasant surprise, then, to discover that the aforementioned hair in question was not the hopelessy thinning provenance of age but rather the luxurious locks of relative youth–in the person of Ms. Meirav (Peled) Barzilay of Tel Aviv, whose dueling inspirations are “traditional crafts on the one hand and serial-production on the other… I constantly strive to mix the two and test the borders of design while finding new ways of looking at things.”

Comb Over Carpet. Designed by Meirav Peled Barzilay.

Comb Over certainly qualifies in regards to this last observation. Because of all the objects onerous or otherwise one encounters daily, I’d never appraise the worst hairstyle imaginable as a source for either art or design. Barzilay, on the other hand, has transformed it into both. The carpet features a prominent bald spot and felt strands of varying lengths, such that the longest of such (some of which reach up to four feet) can be re-directed to obscure the “blemish,” very like a well-placed chapeau. Of course, this is the jokey take on the high-concept piece; the functional applications for this excess of hair include gathering it around oneself like a makeshift blanket or bunching it up into an impromptu pillow.

Barzilay explains why she chose the comb-over for the concept: “the carpet demonstrates how beauty can be found in the blemishes of old age, which we usually try to conceal.” The re-contextualization definitely works on yours truly. I will never again look at a clumsy attempt to conceal baldness without taking myself to a happier place by envisioning Barzilay’s carpet and its accompanying evocations–the beautiful Queen Guinevere clothing herself in her own luxurious locks, for instance.

Via PicoCool.