“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport”*…
From Tokyo’s Narita Airport (and its carpet’s cautionary history), to
Portland Airport’s famous footpad…
Ever since the dawn of time man has separated himself from the lifeless earth beneath him with carpets.
Nowhere has this renunciation of man’s transience been more joyous or uplifting than in the medium of airport carpets.
From Santiago to Sydney, from Bishkek to Boston, the airport carpet sings out its inviolable song, a sign of man’s refusal to go drably into that dark night of international travel.
Such aesthetic intimacy, poetry and passion, has for too long gone unnoticed by the modern traveler.
Until now…
The stories behind the flooring at dozens of the world’s aerodromes: Carpets for Airports.
* Douglas Adams, The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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As we watch our steps, we might recall that today is Bloomsday— the date on which Leopold Bloom goes about Dublin in Ulysses, James Joyce’s immortalization of his first outing with Nora Barnacle, the woman who would eventually become his wife. Readers can join in celebrations almost anywhere in the world.
