Guildcraft Carpets is one of the companies featured in the 2010 GoodWeave Rug Sourcebook, a full-color, hands-on resource guide for interior designers.

The Sourcebook will debut at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show in New York March 18-21. If you’re there, stop by the GoodWeave booth (#774) to say hello and pick up copy.

This weekend was the 23rd annual  Arts & Crafts Conference at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC.  This is the Main Event for devotees of the Arts & Crafts Movement – antiques, reproductions, artisans, educational workshops, you name it. An eclectic bunch of people are drawn in every year by their common love of the works and philosophy of Arts & Crafts.

This was the first year out of the past five that we haven’t displayed at the conference.  I wish we’d been able to attend –we missed seeing our old friends, and making new ones. The conference is always fascinating and stimulating, and the venue is gorgeous. I’ve always wondered if it was possible to roast a whole oxen in one of the lobby fireplaces.

The Asheville Citizen-Times posted a slideshow of the show setup and early arrivals on Friday.

See the previous posts tagged with “GPI” (Grove Park Inn) and our GPI 2009 photoset on Flickr.

Choosing a GoodWeave certified rug is not only the right thing to do, it’s a design trend for 2010, says Robyn Griggs Lawrence, Editor-in-Chief of Natural Home.

Seeing the clear connection between beautifully designed, high-quality rugs and the hands that wove them, she says:

Purchase chic rugs from socially responsible companies. Look for the Goodweave label to ensure your new rug wasn’t made by children.

We appreciate any media attention that raises the profile of GoodWeave and highlights the importance of the issue of child labor in our industry.  This means more consumers have the information they need to choose the right rugs. And with each GoodWeave rug sold, there is greater market pressure on producers to forego child servitude, and children are spared.

Here’s to a trend that’s good for everyone!

Here’s a four-minute video about the work of GoodWeave (formerly RugMark) in its efforts to bring about an end to illegal child labor in the carpet industry. By purchasing a GoodWeave-certified carpet, you help support the work of rehabilitation, schooling, and training of former child slaves.

We’ve always been strongly committed to the GoodWeave organization and its work. It is a fabulous non-profit organization, run in a lean and effective manner by people with a passion for their cause. Learn more here. Then please come back and order a rug!

There was a web piece on MSNBC last week about the work of the GoodWeave organization. In addition to being happy every time the work of Goodweave is noted in the media, I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the piece also  included some words of wisdom from an old friend, John Howe, who is well known in the collector circles of Rugdom.

John was helping to explain the distinction between production of carpets on a commercial scale which may exploit children for cheap labor, and the transmission of weaving skills from mother to daughter in cultures with an ancient tradition of rug-weaving, such as Persia (Iran) and Turkey.

Our carpets are produced in manufactories in India, Nepal, and Pakistan, and we are committed to supporting the excellent work of Goodweave in these countries.

We’ve been woefully lax in our blogging, and I have several project updates to do. I just added this photo of the Prairie-style design we did for a client earlier this year, based on her custom art glass window.

You can read more about the origin of the design, and stained-glass artisan Theodore Ellison, on my original post.

We believe in pricing our rugs fairly and delivering great value, so we don’t offer general discounts or have funny-money sale prices. But there’s a first time for everything, and we decided to test-drive the idea of a “recession special” through the end of the year.

So, from now until December 31, we are reducing our prices on our Voysey and Knox collection carpets. See the individual collection pages for pricing details.

The sale price applies to any purchases or orders placed between now and Dec. 31. Please contact us to inquire about availability, or if you have questions.