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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Tracy and Danielle attended the Arts & Crafts Conference at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC. Though Donegal Carpets was not an official exhibitor, they were able to display a few samples from the GuildCraft collection which were enthusiastically received by exhibitors and public alike.
The October 2005 issue of Old-House Journal featured an excellent article on Arts & Crafts carpets, in which Donegal Carpets were, naturally, quite prominent. The article, entitled “Arts & Crafts Rug Renaissance,” provides one of the best overviews of the subject available to date. The text of the article (minus the excellent photographs) can be seen on the 
Donegal Carpets’ new 
After a series of meetings and events in Chicago at which the 
But even more impressive was their visit to Crab Tree Farm north of Chicago, where a private collector has created an awe-inspiring environment for what is probably the finest collection of English and American Arts & Crafts furniture and decorative arts anywhere in the world. The workshop there was in fact where the exhibition's famous "Stickley Room" was actually made. So this was one of the instances where the museum exhibition, well done as it was, paled in comparison to the collector's vision. 
