Rhyme Studio
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Rhyme Studio is an award-winning multidisciplinary design practice based in New York City and Ireland, working across regenerative materials, interiors, lighting, acoustics, collectible design and fine art. Founded by Irish designer Claire McGovern, the studio develops natural materials for contemporary architecture and interiors, combining material performance, cultural knowledge and design innovation to create healthier and more enduring built environments.
Since 2017, Rhyme Studio has pioneered new applications for wool, beginning with the reintroduction of native Irish wool into the international luxury interiors market and expanding into architectural surfaces, textiles, acoustic systems and lighting. This work has developed into a broader investigation of an urgent global contradiction: the widespread underuse and disposal of natural wool fibre alongside the continued dependence of the built environment on synthetic materials.
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Claire McGovern is the founder and creative director of Rhyme Studio. Originally from Dublin and based in New York, her multidisciplinary career spans almost three decades across interior design, fine art, lighting and furniture design, galleries and showrooms, curatorial practice, art advisory and design-led manufacturing in the United States and Europe.
McGovern established her first art and design gallery in San Francisco in 2002 around the principle of “Total Design”: an approach to interiors in which architecture, art, furniture, lighting, sound and material are considered as parts of a complete environment. Alongside her work as a designer and gallery owner, she spent a decade as a professional DJ, an experience that further informed her understanding of sound, atmosphere and the way people experience space.
Her subsequent career included helping to develop and launch design and lighting businesses in New York before founding Rhyme Studio and turning her attention increasingly toward natural materials and the built environment. Since 2017, McGovern has led the studio's pioneering work with native Irish wool, helping reintroduce the fibre to the international luxury interiors market while expanding its application from collectible carpets and tapestries into architectural surfaces, textiles, acoustics and lighting.
That work has evolved into a broader investigation of material intelligence: how renewable natural materials can replace synthetic ones while contributing actively to healthier, more enduring interior environments. McGovern's work has been extensively featured in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Luxe, The Irish Times and The Sunday Times, among other international design and cultural publications.
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This year Rhyme Studio begins a new chapter in Ireland with the revival of Donegal Carpets, establishing a design and production studio at the historic Donegal Carpets factory in Killybegs, County Donegal. The move brings Rhyme Studio's contemporary work with Irish wool into a site with more than a century of Irish carpet-making history and surviving historic looms.
The studio will progressively restore carpet-making at the factory while establishing a centre for design, production and material innovation, alongside a museum and gallery with a programme dedicated to its remarkable design heritage. For Rhyme Studio, Donegal represents both a return to Irish production and an investment in its future: restoring skills, creating new applications for wool and connecting an important Irish design legacy with an international contemporary practice.
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Rhyme Studio undertakes select residential and commercial interiors, art advisory, residential styling and site-specific design commissions. Drawing upon almost three decades of experience across interiors, fine art, lighting, furniture and material development, the studio approaches projects through the principle of Total Design, considering architecture, light, art, sound, texture and material as elements of a complete environment.
Interior Design
Rhyme Studio works across residential and commercial interiors in New York, San Francisco and internationally, from complete environments to focused design interventions. Projects draw upon the studio's experience in fine art, lighting and furniture design, material intelligence and custom fabrication to create refined, enduring spaces with particular attention to natural materials and human wellbeing.Art Advisory & Curation
Drawing upon McGovern's background in fine art, gallery direction and curatorial practice, Rhyme Studio advises private and commercial clients on the acquisition, commissioning, curation and placement of art. The studio also represents a select group of contemporary artists and makers whose work complements its wider design practice.Residential Styling
For select properties preparing for market, Rhyme Studio offers design-led residential styling conceived as an alternative to conventional staging. Drawing upon its own curated inventory of collectible art, signature carpets, sculptural lighting and furnishings, alongside select partnerships with boutique makers, the studio creates photography-ready environments that strengthen the architecture and elevate presentation without sacrificing individuality.Custom & Site-Specific Design
Rhyme Studio collaborates with architects, interior designers, collectors and private clients on custom carpets and tapestries, architectural wool, lighting and site-specific installations. These commissions bring together the studio's expertise in material development, colour, scale, fabrication and spatial design to create work conceived specifically for its architectural setting. -
Rhyme Studio believes that materials should do more.
Our approach to Material Intelligence begins with the inherent capabilities of natural materials and asks how design can put those properties to greater use. Rather than relying upon increasingly complex synthetic materials to perform individual functions, we look to renewable materials that can contribute simultaneously to performance, human wellbeing and the life of an interior.
Wool has become central to that investigation. Renewable, biodegradable and remarkably complex, the fibre can absorb sound, regulate moisture and temperature, resist flame and compression, and interact with airborne pollutants. These characteristics have informed Rhyme Studio's evolution from collectible carpets and tapestries into architectural surfaces, textiles, acoustics and lighting.
The work began with native Irish wool in 2017, but revealed a much larger global contradiction. Wool represents only a fraction of contemporary fibre production, while significant quantities of strong wool are undervalued or discarded and the built environment remains heavily dependent upon petrochemical materials. We see an opportunity not simply to preserve an ancient fibre, but to reconsider its value through design.
Design Driven by Material Intelligence is therefore both a design philosophy and an ongoing area of research for Rhyme Studio: understanding what natural materials already know how to do, and designing new applications around that intelligence.
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"Exciting Designs in Breathtaking Colours" -- Dr. Jennifer Goff, Curator of the Eileen Gray Collection, National Museum of Ireland.
“Living History” LUXE Magazine
Wool is one of nature's most sophisticated performance materials. Renewable and biodegradable, its complex protein fibre has evolved to protect an animal across changing conditions of temperature, moisture and climate. Those same inherent properties give wool an extraordinary range of applications within the built environment.
Wool absorbs sound, moderates temperature and humidity, resists flame, retains its structure under prolonged use and can adsorb airborne pollutants including formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds. Its natural resilience contributes to exceptional longevity, while at the end of its useful life the fibre can biodegrade rather than persist as plastic waste. These are not technologies added to wool. They are properties of the material itself.
Rhyme Studio's investigation began in Ireland in 2017. In seeking native wool for our first carpet collection, we discovered a once significant wool economy that had been reduced to the point of collapse. Ireland, with millions of sheep and a remarkable history of wool production, had become dependent upon imported fibre while much of its own strong wool had little commercial value. What initially appeared to be an Irish problem soon revealed a much larger global contradiction: useful wool is undervalued or discarded in many parts of the world while the textile and interiors industries remain heavily dependent upon synthetic fibres derived from petrochemicals. The imbalance between natural fibre production and the modern global fibre market was central to Rhyme Studio's original wool research.
Ireland is therefore both our point of origin and a compelling case study for change. The collapse of its wool market demonstrates what can happen when local fibre, agricultural policy, manufacturing capacity and design become disconnected. We believe Ireland can also demonstrate the reverse: how design, research and high-value manufacturing can restore economic purpose to an overlooked natural resource.
For Rhyme Studio, the answer has never been simply to preserve wool because it is traditional. It is to design new value around what the fibre can already do. Our work has consequently moved from carpets and tapestries into architectural surfaces, textiles and LanaLux, our wool-based architectural system combining light, acoustic performance and passive air purification. LanaLux replaces conventional petrochemical acoustic materials with compressed wool and is being developed around serviceable and replaceable components to extend product life and reduce material waste.
The Material Intelligence of Wool is the foundation of a much larger proposition: that some of the materials we need for healthier, lower-impact interiors already exist in abundance. The challenge for design is to recognize their intelligence, create new applications for it and build the systems that make those materials valuable again.
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SEPTEMBER 2026 | A NEW CHAPTER FOR DONEGAL CARPETS
Rhyme Studio Announces the Revival of Historic Donegal Carpets
Rhyme Studio announces plans to establish its Irish design and production home at the historic Donegal Carpets factory in Killybegs, County Donegal. The ambitious initiative will bring new life to a remarkable Irish design legacy through contemporary production, material innovation, and the progressive reopening of its historic factory, looms, museum and gallery.
JULY 2026 | NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Design Driven by Material Intelligence
Founder and Creative Director Claire McGovern presents Rhyme Studio's approach to designing beyond synthetics in a special New York Public Library programme, exploring the extraordinary properties of natural materials and their potential to transform the built environment.
JUNE 2026 | NEOCON, CHICAGO
Rhyme Studio Brings Irish Wool Innovation to NeoCon
Rhyme Studio presents LanaLux alongside its contemporary carpet collections at NeoCon, introducing the studio's expanding architectural wool portfolio to the international commercial design community.
MAY 2026 | NYC DESIGN WEEK
LanaLux, Architectural Wool and the Castle Collection Make Their New York Debut
Three distinct expressions of Rhyme Studio's design language debut during NYC Design Week: LanaLux, an architectural system integrating light, acoustic performance and the natural air-adsorbing properties of wool; the new Architectural Wool program tailored for the trade and Castle, a carpet collection drawing inspiration from Ireland's Art Deco heritage
EARLY 2026 | MATERIAL INNOVATION
Advancing LanaLux: Wool, Light, Sound & Air
A new phase of prototype development refines LanaLux's compressed-wool acoustic core, integrated lighting and textile finishes, advancing Rhyme Studio's vision for multifunctional architectural products made with regenerative natural materials