The Parterre Collection
Playful parquetry
Created in collaboration with Academy Award-winning Australian designer Catherine Martin, the Parterre collection reimagines traditional parquetry with an idiosyncratic and playful sensibility. Drawing on Martin’s celebrated instinct for pattern, storytelling and richly layered interiors, the collection combines the natural beauty of European oak with modular designs developed from a distinct visual reference or personal memory.
A world of imagination
Parterre takes its name from a French expression meaning “on the ground”, reflecting a collection rooted in the history of decorative flooring while opening up new possibilities for contemporary interiors.
Inspired by references as varied as schoolroom linoleum, 1940s Art Deco, Giorgio de Chirico’s paintings, rotary telephone cords and geometric paving, Parterre transforms familiar forms into an expressive new language for timber flooring.
Across the collection, curves, arches and rectilinear forms are arranged into distinctive repeats that can be reconfigured to suit different spaces. Changes in grain direction bring subtle definition to tonal compositions, while contrasting finishes emphasise the graphic quality of each pattern. The result can be restrained and textural or bold and theatrical, allowing designers to shape each installation around the distinctive character of an interior.
Explore Catherine Martin’s collection
Parterre comprises six designs – School Room, Capsule, Cable, Arches, Birdie and Hopscotch – each developed from a personal visual reference. Designed as a flexible system rather than a fixed collection, Parterre gives designers the freedom to compose with pattern and colour across floors, walls and ceilings, from tonal arrangements defined by grain direction to bold, graphic contrasts.
The designer
Catherine Martin is an Australian costume and production designer and producer, celebrated for her longstanding creative collaboration with husband Baz Luhrmann. Across films including Moulin Rouge!, The Great Gatsby and Elvis, her richly layered approach to costume and set design has created some of contemporary cinema’s most distinctive worlds. Her work has earned her four Academy Awards, six BAFTAs and a Tony Award.