7.22.09 London.

all alone on the train at the crack of dawn.

trying to fake awake. we tried and we failed.

What a morning we had. We had to meet at 5:45 AM so we could make our appointment at the Brinton Carpet factory. Brinton carpets is the largest carpet company in the world and one of the oldest. They began in 1783 and they is a private owned family business. We took a 2-hour train ride to get there and then a one hour bus ride to the factory so traveling wise, it was a long day. They were so good to us there though and had biscuits aka cookies for us to have when we arrived. We then split up into groups and had four different areas of the factory to visit. My groups first stop was the main factory area and we were able to see how they make the carpet and all the processes that go into creating their carpets. The process is a secret so no pictures to show. Their technology is all patented and super innovative. Our tour guide was a retired sheerer who worked for the company for a long time. He had a most wonderful accent and I hope to improve my accent after listening to him talk for so long. After seeing how time consuming and complicated the process of creating the carpet is I have such a higher appreciation for the carpet I walk on everyday. Granted, Brinton carpet is very high end so it’s a bit more complicated to make so not all carpet is that intense of a process so it was cool to see how they make it.

We were ale to hear from John Baird who is a designer for Brinton and he told us about the different projects they have worked on and such. They do mostly commercial design such as hotels, casinos, and cruise ships. They actually did the Queen Mary ship, which they had carpeted previously in the 1930’s and they still had the original pattern in the archives and were able to match it exactly. The scale at which they make the carpet and the installations they do are so huge that it is hard to imagine designing for that large of a space. They have so many collections and are constantly coming out with new designs each year. That was probably my favorite part of the day was seeing their archives that date back to 1783. The designers are able to use the archives at their leisure and derive inspiration from earlier designs. It was sheer brilliance touching hand painted designs that dated back to the 1800’s with out even a second thought. They don’t regard their archives as precious just valuable resources and freely use them. That was refreshing after going to so many stuffy museums with everything behind glass. Some of the designs that were originals from the Victorian or Georgian periods were incredible and the colors were so vibrant. We learned about the pattern paisley as well and that it is actually a Persian pattern but weavers in Paisley, Scotland recreated the designs so it became called paisley after the name of the city.

They fed us a real English lunch and it was so kind of them to feed us and treat us so well. The place we ate lunch had some sofas and several carpet samples on the floor laid out like mats almost. After eating, we sat on those couches and carpets and pretty much every one of us fell asleep for a good 45 minutes. We are all pretty burned out from this weeks adventures and this early morning business just did us in I guess. It was a good power nap for the second half of our day.

Next up we went to the visit the project designers and managers and the ones in charge of scaling the designs to meet the CAD drawings. It was fascinating to watch them use this crazy software much like photoshop to create and transform the patterns onto a floor plan. It was so nice to be able to visualize what the floor will actually look like once its installed and I can see why this is so handy to have when showing clients their ideas because when you are installing carpet in places that are 180,000 square feet, you want to make sure it will look right. Brinton is a global company so they have main offices in London, India, United States and are beginning one in China. The India factory makes a lot of the large scale projects such as the Atlantis hotel in Dubai that they are working on right now, because India has the most looms. I am just intrigued by the whole process of how it actually all gets finished and set in place exactly perfect. Never again will I ignorantly walk through a hotel. I’ll have an eye on the floor at all times. It was a lovely day at Brinton and the travel back to our flats was filled with more sleeping as tomorrow is another early morning and full day.

ashlee on the train ride back. sleep is all we did whenever we could.

this is what greets us every time we come home.

sorry for the glare but you still the jist of just how beautiful this car is.