Charleston, SC Events
We recently returned from a trip to Charleston, SC to visit our local retailer, Rivendell Woodworks. We were there for the Broad Street retailers' "Girls Night Out", and the event was a delightful occasion, with great food, excellent company, and probably too much champagne. Owner Terri Johnson brought us in to give our educational and entertaining presentation on "Oriental Carpets in Period Interiors", with emphasis on Arts & Crafts carpets.
Terri put us up at the Meeting Street Inn, and we had a gorgeous room right off the courtyard. I love the smell of jasmine in the morning. (There, Robert Duvall.) We added a couple of days to our trip so that we could meet with the Historic Charleston Foundation and I could revisit some areas familiar to me from my childhood. My mother is from the Carolina low country, and we spent a fair amount of time there each year when I was a child, but I haven't been there since about 1980.
After a fascinating and insightful visit with Historic Charleston curator Brandy Culp at the Nathaniel Russell House, Danielle, my middle daughter Madelyn, and I made like tourists. Some of the highlights included:
We've moved! Our new office and design studio is just down the street from our original location in beautiful, historic 
Davis Freud has joined 321 Artisans' Guild in Minneapolis. The Guild building, located in the Design District, is in the beginning
stages of a prolonged renovation, but has great ambience with
its hardwood floors, high ceilings, and open staircase. The new
showroom will provide a convenient location in which to meet
with clients as well as additional display space. Davis Freud looks
forward to announcing the grand opening event.
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.
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. 