2009 oak ridgeway grandfather clock serial number 98008970

on April 8, 1928, and its resemblance to a handwoven Persian carpet was so remarkable that it was called a вЂњmystery rug.вЂќ The new rugs were given a name that played up the enigma - Karastan - an invented place that, to American ears, surely sounded more like the source of a Persian-style rug than Leaksville, N.C.Д«y 1931, the millвЂ™s engineers had transformed 52 working Axminster looms, reproducing patterns that were copied by KarastanвЂ™s designers from handmade originals. He modified the loom so that it wove through the back, simulating the look of a hand-knotted rug.ДЄccording to company lore, the first rug came off one of these customized Axminsters at 2:02 p.m. An engineer and inventor employed by the company, Eugene Clark, began experimenting with the Axminster broadlooms. When it opened in 1921, the mill was a branch of Marshall FieldвЂ™s Homecrest Rug division. Textile mills were segregated until the 1960s, and Black workers were excluded from production jobs until then. The expanded mill was built, along with 166 cottages, to house what at the time was an all-white work force. But the new mill needed land for expansion and chose a Black neighborhood nearby, displacing much of the population. The company already had mills nearby, and the new site - a former furniture factory along the Dan River - offered plenty of water for textile finishing. Though known today for its former retail empire, Marshall Field had an equally important wholesale business that supplied its stores and others. moved its underwear and bedspread manufacturing from Illinois to the town of Leaksville, which consolidated with two other towns to form Eden in the 1960s, it was to be closer to non-unionized labor and cotton, a raw material used in many of its products. But Karastan has been in these parts far longer than that. ShropshireвЂ™s shop has had ties to the people who worked at the mill, less than a mile away, since ScottyвЂ™s opened in 1974. (вЂњDogs, cats and kids keep us going,вЂќ he said of the rug-cleaning business.) Mr. ShropshireвЂ™s own Karastan rug has been in storage at the shop ever since his family welcomed a new puppy to their home last year. Even after 30 to 40 years, they hold up really well,вЂќ said Robert Gordon Shropshire of ScottyвЂ™s Carpet and Oriental Rug Service, which specializes in cleaning and repairing Karastan rugs. вЂњItвЂ™s one of the better machine-made rugs. The wonder of the wonder rug may be that as a relic of AmericaвЂ™s shrinking middle class, it managed to last this long.

These American-made rugs were marketed to a customer who, like the grand department stores of yore, seems not to have survived into the 21st century. KarastanвЂ™s wool rugs cost much less than handwoven imports: In 2019, a 9-by-12-foot Karastan was around $1800. Karastan helped take this trend into the 20th century, making a machine-made rug sold exclusively at department stores and through a network of approved dealers across the United States.

Handwoven and knotted rugs of wool or silk from various countries including Iran (a.k.a вЂњPersianвЂќ rugs), China, India, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco and Egypt have long been used in Western dГ©cor, especially in 19th-century Europe. That a product made and marketed as an вЂњOrientalвЂќ rug is associated with wonder should come as little surprise given the history of Orientalism in the West, which conflated various geographical regions and romanticized this invented place - the вЂњOrientвЂќ - as a site of exoticism and danger, in need of colonialist control.

2009 oak ridgeway grandfather clock serial number 98008970