Support Pakistani artisans and take home a beautiful work of art for your home.
Image courtesy of Ten Thousand Villages
A Bunyaad rug in a dining room.
Rugs can really pull a room together.
If you're in need of a new one for your home or office, Ten Thousand Villages will be welcoming fair trade rug company Bunyaad Thursday through Sunday.
This is the 11th year of the run sale, featuring hundreds of hand-crafted rugs made by Pakistani artisans.
Ten Thousand Villages has been a King Street fixture for 28 years. The non-profit store at 915 King St. sells sustainable, fair trade household and personal items crafted by artisans from around the world.
Bunyaad was founded in the 1960s by a Pakistani pastor and rug artisan. Today, the organization works with 850 families working across 100 villages throughout Pakistan. The artisans, both Christian and Muslim, are paid a fair, living wage to design and create beautiful rugs.
Through its relationships with Pakistani artisans, Bunyaad is able to create more fair employment opportunities, empower women and support the development of schools and successful families and villages.
Bunyaad recently opened a rug store in Lititz, Pennsylvania but most of its sales are done through rug events hosted by fair trade shops like Ten Thousand Villages across the United States and Canada.
Kate McMahon took over management of the Ten Thousand Villages store in Alexandria in 2008. “I love the concept of fair trade. I have a retail background and to me this is retail with a conscious. You’re supporting these small business and you know where the products come from, it just has a lot more meaning to it,” said McMahon. She hosted the first Bunyaad rug event in 2011.
Ten Thousand Villages will take out fixtures and push everything against the walls to make space for five rug platforms throughout the shop. The shop will still be open for regular business during the event.
Pakistani artisan, Razia, works on a rug in her home.
Each rug is hand-knotted. It takes four adults working five hours a day on a loom approximately 14 months to produce a 10’x12’ rug.
Rugs vary from tribal, Bochara and Persian in classic and contemporary designs and range in size from 2’x3’ to 10’x14’ plus runners, squares and rounds. The artisans choose the color and design of each rug inspired by nature and cultural tradition. Some of the rugs are made from hand-spun wool and colored using natural dyes. Others are made with machine spun wool and standard dyes which creates a different texture and vibrancy.
Rugs are priced from $75 for a table top rug to between $7,000 to $15,000 for a room-sized rug depending on the style, knot count and material.
“You can go into any of these rug shops and the prices are going to be the same or higher and in a lot of cases they don’t know the artisans. They may have been machine made but they’re telling you that they’re handmade. You don’t know the background of those rugs – we do,” explained McMahon. The tag on each rug tells you the village where it was made.
The quality of the rugs means they will last on average 75-100 years. They are easy to clean with a vacuum or soap and water due to the naturally stain-resistant qualities of the materials used to make them. They hold up the wear and tear of pets and kids.
Ten Thousand Villages is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m. If those times don’t work, appointments outside of business hours can be scheduled during the rug event.
McMahon encourages people to stop by and see the rugs for themselves. “It’s a win-win situation. Artisans in Pakistan earn a living wage and North American consumers get an excellent quality rug with an excellent mission behind it. Home decorating was never more beautiful!”
Learn more about Bunyaad and the event by visiting bunyaad.com/event/rug-event-alexandria/.
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