The conversation piece: It’s the Holy Grail for discerning home decorators.

Yet unless you want the dialogue to sound something along the lines of: “Gee, I have the same tablecloth. Don’t you just love that store?” then you may have to look beyond those omnipresent chain stores.

But you needn’t venture to a remote corner of the world to seek out unique textiles that will never be renamed in Swedish and marketed to the masses at IKEA. Instead, your search just might end at the boutique next door. B.C. is home to a variety of independent home-decor designers whose work adds an exclusive, artistic stamp to any living space.

Here are a few to consider:

NETTIE

Last winter, when Paula Lukey set out to create a line of pillows, napkins, table runners and placemats, she decided to name her business after her dear grandmother.

“I always remember when we went for visits to grandma’s house. She was very creative,” says Lukey, who runs Nettie (www.nettiestyle.com) out of her Vancouver basement apartment.

But while rooted in family tradition, Lukey’s designs are a far cry from the frilly, lacy doodads typically associated with sweet old grannies. Lukey, who is experienced in both interior and graphic design, calls herself a “neutral, very earthy girl” who likes the occasional splash of colour (the “little bit of surprise in me,” she explains).

Hence Nettie pieces come in a limited range of colours: chocolate, melon and olive for the twill tableware and brown, blue, red and grey for Lukey’s faux suede pillows, which come in 16-inch and 20-inch sizes.

Lukey’s graphics adorn each of the items.

“It’s very zen, very organic. A lot of the stuff is derived from nature,” she says.

However, Lukey’s imagery — for instance, the ylang ylang plant or kissing fish — is so streamlined that the buyer may not even recognize the original forms.

“Because I have a background in graphic design, I’m always used to taking some sort of shape and really stripping it down to the essence,” she says.

This potential guessing game only adds to Nettie’s appeal as art you can pet — what Lukey calls “living art.”

Both the modern graphic design and colour palette have also added something else to Nettie’s appeal: gender neutrality.

Lukey says it’s been an “awesome surprise” to discover that men seem to be particularly fond of her wares.

“It’s easy to look at, and it’s not too cutesy,” she figures.

OUNO DESIGN

Ouno started with a pair of bored shoppers.

Longtime friends Lindsay Brown and Sarah Gee both had a passion for “warm modernism” — a decor philosophy borrowed from Japanese, Scandinavian and ancient design that takes the simplicity of minimalism and softens it up with a dash of coziness and sensuality. But reality just didn’t produce the elements they imagined.

“We felt that there was the traditional arts and crafts on the one hand and there was this very cold modernism on the other,” says Brown.

Meanwhile, Brown harboured more of a “Dr. Zhivago, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon kind of obsession.”

So Brown and Gee, who live a stone’s throw from one another in Strathcona, created their own version of design perfection. Ouno (www.ounodesign.com) is a line of pillows, throws, rugs, blankets, room dividers, wall hangings and oddities fashioned from vintage fur and fabrics.

The duo roots through rag houses, salvaging things like carpets, upholstery, curtains, sheepskin and fur coats. These are the materials that transform into Ouno’s adventurous and durable products.

“The stuff that we’re getting from the ’60s and ’70s is so heavy. It’s got a hand-woven quality. The newer machines simply can’t reproduce that,” says Brown.

Plus, it provides an opportunity for the fur-curious to wade into guilt-free territory, since all of Ouno’s fur creations come from discarded old coats.

“You might as well honour it until it’s really used up,” explains Brown, who fully acknowledges the moral questions raised by fur in our modern culture but believes that we can’t erase past cruelties. A section of Ouno’s website is dedicated to the issue.

Some of the pieces — like a mink lifejacket that wouldn’t have done much good aboard the Titanic — are just for display. Others, such as a throw constructed from multiple jackets (the underside is a patchwork of original linings and labels) are fully functional. And one of Ouno’s best sellers is the playful fur ball ($85).

The pieces are available in select stores and at private sales.

TENFOLD ORGANIC TEXTILES

Leah Weinstein figures that if you’re going to slip into something organic, bedding is a good place to begin.

“It makes sense because it’s where you spend one-third of your day,” says Weinstein, who lives in Nelson.

Her Tenfold Organic Textiles (www.tenfoldorganic.com), which launched in January, produces quilts for adults and babies, duvet covers, sheets and pillow cases, all made from organic cotton. Weinstein also uses an array of 11 non-toxic vegetable dyes such as turmeric root, pomegranate rind, indigo, madder root and onion root. Both the cotton and dyes are sourced from western India.

“Cotton is actually the most heavily pesticided agricultural crop,” says Weinstein. By opting for organic cottons and dyes, she believes there is a benefit to the end user as well as the people who are processing it in the first place. “As well as the water systems the effluent is traveling into,” she adds.

In addition, by choosing natural plant dyes, Weinstein also hopes to preserve a dying tradition.

“The colour fades a little bit but I think that is one of the beauties of natural dyes. It’s just a softness and it has an earthy subtlety,” she says.

Weinstein uses a lot of trees in her designs, including a peace tree and a tree of life.

Tenfold Organic Textiles are available in Vancouver at Circle Craft on Granville Island and Hafatzim in Kitsilano.

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