A few days ago, we got a call from Cynthia Shaw-McLaughlin, director of the Boettcher Mansion near Golden, CO. We met Cynthia a few months ago at the Arts & Crafts Conference in Asheville and have talked a few times since then.

The Mansion, which must be run by Tracy's kind of people since they have their own construction/renovation blog, is in the midst of a flurry of activity, and Cynthia contacted us about producing some large, custom-sized carpets from our GuildCraft Voysey collection. They selected Voysey's Tulip & Lily design for the Aspen Room, with the possibility of a companion carpet for the Pine Room at a later date.

Posted by Danielle Freudenthal at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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:

Continue reading "Charleston, SC Events" »

Posted by Tracy Davis at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our carpet project for the Pabst Mansion's Regency Room is proceeding.... slowly. We're still in the drafting stage, recreating the design point by point.

The only documentation we have of the original carpet is the visual reference provided by black & white photographs from 1902. The photos were originally taken with a wide-angle lens, and some areas of the photographs are overexposed. This makes it quite a challenge to determine the scale, size, and shape of some of the design elements as we try to replicate the original carpet.

Part of the reason for our trip to Milwaukee was to inspect the architectural detail of the Regency Room, particularly the mantel and the recently restored ceiling. This really paid off, and provided us with a plethora of ideas to present to the Mansion's architectural historial, John Eastberg, and historic interiors expert Gail Winkler, who is consulting on the project.

Continue reading "Visit to the Pabst Mansion" »

Posted by Tracy Davis at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We visited the Prairie Archives of the Milwaukee Art Museum to do some research and to meet with museum staff about a possible collaboration in anticipation of next year's exhibition on the works of George Mann Niedecken.

Liz Flaig, the curatorial administrator of the archives, and the other staff were as cordially enthusiastic as we could wish. We were particularly interested, of course, in carpet and textile designs, so we focused on those. We looked at many original drawings and documentation for Niedecken interiors in the midwest, including several of those done in collaboration with Frank Lloyd Wright.

Continue reading "Milwaukee Art Museum Prairie Archives" »

Posted by Tracy Davis at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Danielle and I went to Sarasota, FL earlier this month to attend a gallery crawl in which our carpets were featured by one of our retailers, Art To Walk On. Our delightful hosts, John and Eileen Hampshire, were gracious enough to invite us to stay at their home for the weekend. John is an architect with a long and distinguished career; Eileen is an antique carpet dealer and an expert on Armenian carpets.

Continue reading "Sarasota Art Walk" »

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Davis Freud made two whirwind trips to Manhattan in July, characterized by 12 hours of back-to-back meetings, excellent food, visiting old friends and making some new ones. They had breakfast inside Richard Rogers' stunning Hearst Tower with Georgia Fleming, Hearst Publications editor for luxury products at Veranda magazine (shown in front); met with several architects and designers to discuss projects; and consulted with ABC Carpet & Home regarding representation of the GuildCraft line.

A highlight of the second trip was meeting with Alan Wanzenberg to discuss projects and to request feedback on product ideas and samples. Alan and his late partner, Jed Johnson, together developed an aesthetic known for its expression of opulent restraint. Alan himself owns an original Donegal carpet, the design known today as the "Fintona", in a luscious sorbet palette of greens, golds, and soft corals.

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   As a little diversion from her "real job", Tracy works on the stabilization and repair of a late medieval tapestry in the textile lab at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Click to view the whole tapestry: The Ship of Virtues (MIA 42.15, 13' x 13', silk and wool. Tournai, about 1528-1540). The tapestry will probably be on exhibition in 2007.

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   Like so many other things in Northfield, it all started at the Goodbye Blue Monday, where Northfield's glitterati and those with no visible means of support come to bond over lattes.

   During an otherwise typical morning coffee hour in 2002, Davis and Freud were introduced by a mutual acquaintance, and the conversation quickly turned to... wool. Tracy Davis was the owner and proprietor of a retail gallery which sold antique and contemporary oriental carpets, and Danielle Freudenthal was the Vice President of Marketing for a independent woolen mill. One thing led to another, and a year later the two established a company to produce hand-knotted woolen carpets, and the Davis Freud design division was formed. The rest, as they say, is history.

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