A new collaborative project between the World Bank, LabelSTEP, and Turquoise Mountain seeks to empower women while simultaneously moving the Afghan carpet industry into the twenty-first century.

Turquoise Mountain is a non-profit organization founded in 2006, at the behest of His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales. Now working in Afghanistan, Myanmar, and the Middle East, Turquoise Mountain’s objective is to preserve and regenerate historic areas and communities with a rich cultural heritage and to revive traditional crafts in order to create employment, improve trade skills, and foster a renewed sense of regional and cultural pride. Its work is broad, encompassing myriad crafts and trades, from woodworking to ceramics to of course handmade carpet weaving. 

Rodney Hakim is a dealer at Persian Gallery New York whom Rug Insider has known for many years. When Hakim inquired this past spring as to why Rug Insider didn’t feature more old or antique carpets on our pages, we sheepishly had to admit it was mostly due to lack of experience with the genre. Hakim graciously offered to help introduce us, and now perhaps many of you, to the world of “old work” as we’re calling it.

Inviting visitors to walk on the rugs and carpets of an architecturally significant home may seem at odds with preservation, but as Rug Insider discovers in conversation with Scott W. Perkins, Director of Preservation and Collections, Fallingwater at Western Pennsylvania Conservancy,  sometimes the goal is more experiential.

“A good quality wool rug or carpet will provide years of service with proper care and cleaning” is in one way or another a sentence that has been spoken by countless salesmen when describing the durability of said rugs.

Iconic and inspirational, the work of Swedish textile firm Märta Måås-Fjetterström is synonymous with the resurgent popularity of Mid-Century inspired rugs and carpets. Rug Insider takes a closer look at the firm and its work. 

To think of the aesthetic of Mid-Century is to recall the iconic forms of noted designers such as Wegner, Jacobsen, Saarinen,
Nelson, and Eames, each an iconic personality whose equally singular designs have come to be emblematic of the period, and whose names carry provenance and stature.

In late August 2017 a calamitous hurricane caused massive flooding and destruction in Houston, Texas. As the city and region continues to rebuild, rug insider Lisa Slappey of Pride of Persia Rug Company & Postmodern Traditions provides a narrative on the fate of deluged rugs and carpets and the state of rug sales.