2009
Our 25th
Anniversary!
Time flies when
you’re making rugs—but it has been 25
years since the beginning of
Rafter-four Designs. And like all big anniversaries, it’s a time for us
to celebrate—and also to look back and take stock of how far we have
come, and where we are going.
First, a big thanks to all our friends, customers and rug makers around
the world for making the last 25 years possible! It has been so
wonderful to know that there are so many of you interested in
preserving these traditional rug making methods, and we’re looking
forward to sharing more information with you.
As you may know, we began in 1984 to publish instructions for making
traditional rag rugs in the form of Rugmaker’s Notebooks, Rags to Rugs
Books and Rugmaker’s Bulletins. Our efforts are now concentrated on
compiling and expanding the rug information into the Rugmaker’s
Handbooks which are available worldwide through amazon.com and Barnes
& Noble online. As each new Handbook becomes available, we are
going to be discontinuing the older versions, since the new references
are so much more complete. As our master rugmaker, Diana Blake Gray,
puts it she is in the process of offloading more than 30 years of rug
making research and experience to make sure that these techniques are
preserved for generations to come.
Diana said at the outset that she wouldn’t be writing about techniques
that had been well-documented (like loom weaving and rug hooking) and
in the process of deciding on the content of the Rugmaker’s Handbooks,
there are several other methods that are not really within the scope of
our mission. For those we have decided to publish instructions on the
web instead.
We’re looking forward to our 25th year and hope you enjoy the changes
too!
A big
Thank You from all of
us at Rafter-four Designs!
