It Takes a Village, or, Six Countries, Four Continents, One Carpet
In case anyone is wondering whether we really do live in a global village, and if the world is flat, I offer the following story.
Once upon a time, there was an architect in New York who saw one of our luscious mohair samples, and decided that it would be perfect for one of their projects. The client required a distinctive hand-knotted carpet for a rather stately room with some challenging architectural constraints.
After intensive consultation and discussion, the architect contracted with us to produce the carpet. Although we have the capacity to do design work in-house, we asked our Irish partner, Donegal Carpets, to graph the design for weaving. The client had selected one of Donegal's oldest documented designs, generally referred to as the Fintona, and he liked the idea that the artwork would be produced by the venerable company. While Colm drafted and graphed the design in Ireland, we worked on the wool and color specifications in our Minnesota studio.
After the design work was done and the colors approved, we were ready to purchase the wool and begin the dyeing and weaving. Mohair is a specialty fiber, the fleece of the Angora goat, and most commercially available mohair comes from South Africa, with minor production in Australia and Texas. However, during the interim when the design work and coloring was being done, an Italian textile company had bought up both the currently available mohair clip and mohair futures, which caused the market price of mohair to double.
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Davis Freud had several meetings with architects and designers in New York, as well as a presentation to the VPs of development for Schumacher and Patterson Flynn Martin. Watch for breaking news on this front as soon as it can be made public.....