Non-Profit Rugs: From Tibet to Wrentham!

Wrentham Antiques Marketplace has been exhibiting hand-woven carpets for years but now they are adding new styles with a non-profit twist. For centuries rug weaving has been more than a craft in Tibet. It has been part of the culture. Now these peoples are turning carpet weaving into self-sufficiency by joining non-profit cooperatives that plow profits back into the community in the form of school building, reforestation, and arts projects. As they struggle for economic progress, they achieve something just as important to them: cultural survival.

They weave their own traditional designs with their tribal emblems and folkloric motifs. One of the most popular designs among Tibetan rugs is Gaon Naksha, or "Village Life" which is basically a look out the weaver's window through the weaver's eyes - a work of art that brings immediate contact with some of the most remote places and exotic cultures on earth. Our Gaon Nakshas are produced by Tibetans exiled in Nepal, who have built a Tibetan-language elementary school and cultural center with rug proceeds. They expanded the school with an organic greenhouse, launched a reforestation project inside Tibet (where some mountainsides have been clear-cut for lumber).

With a focus on women's initiatives, the rug proceeds supported the first-ever collection of contemporary Tibetan women’s' writing and the first-ever women's magazine for Tibetan women in Tibetan language.

“…this is the best way to choose a Persian Rug!”

Imagine, a crew coming to your home, moving the living room, dining room and, or family room furniture and placing one Persian Rug after another and one more beautiful than the last? Just think how perfect a process that would be to never have to lift a single rug. How would it feel to take whatever time you need to ponder each rug that you have carefully selected from our inventory of hundreds of Fine Persian Rugs? Can you even imagine?

When our customers have completed their selections at our store, viewed a number of options and made a choice right in their own homes, they always call us the next day to thank us for the “most incredible and efficient buying experience” in which they have ever participated! They “can’t believe how much fun they had” and “how much they learned in the process” and from now on they “feel far less intimidated and confused about Persian Rugs!”

For us, the best part is when they can’t wait to tell their friends…and for that, we thank each and every one of our satisfied customers!