At home: Beautiful Afghan rugs are splendid poverty fighters

from The USA Today

By Maria Puente, USA TODAY
It's an age-old question: What can any one person do to fight global poverty? You can shop. For luxury rugs.

That's the answer offered by Arzu, a non-profit, for-benefit corporation that is bringing the traditional rugs of Afghanistan to the Western market while providing stable employment, education and health care benefits to female weavers and their families.

"This is a new trend in social entrepreneurship," says Connie Duckworth, president of Arzu ("hope" in the Afghan language Dari), a retired Goldman Sachs highflier. "The biggest empowerment for women is a job and the ability to earn income. The idea was to (find) the highest-quality high-end product that can be produced for export."

The answer: Afghan wool rugs, which have been coveted for millennia. But near-constant conflict in recent years had diminished rug production and quality and threatened the loss of traditional patterns and techniques.

Arzu aims to reverse that. It employs the weavers — so far, 700 women, plus their families, in 10 villages — and pays them a salary plus bonuses for finished rugs. Proceeds of the sales of the rugs, about $1,000 for a small one and up to $18,000 for large, are invested in village schooling and health care.

"Each rug is unique, and we know who made it and their family circumstances," Duckworth says. "They get away from the idea that charity items are junk made for tourists."

Since fall 2004, nearly 700 rugs have been sold through trunk shows in high-end markets around the USA, through the website (ArzuRugs.org) and through architects and interior designers. She hopes to produce up to 1,200 rugs a year soon.

No power? Don't be left in the dark

Power outages are an irritating fact of modern life — and so is stumbling around looking for a flashlight and cursing the darkness. Now Energizer is offering a family of lighting products to reduce the darkness, the stumbling and the cursing.

The Energizer Light On Demand line includes seven products, ranging from a nightlight ($24.99) to an All-in-One Light Center with four detachable area lights in a charging base ($70).

Some of the products have a "find-me" light: It senses (through the wall plug) an outage and automatically turns on.

The lights are intended for everyday use, such as the desk lamp ($44.99), so homeowners already will be aware of where they are when the power goes, eliminating the need to fumble for a flashlight. When there's an extended outage, regular batteries can be used in the light sticks, adding hours of use. Also, the wall sconce ($44.99) and the motion light ($29.99) don't require wiring, so they can be placed anywhere without the need to hire an electrician.

The lights use LED technology, which is more efficient than incandescent light bulbs, and they last much longer.

The line is available at Target (Target.com) nationwide.

Haute couture is in the house

World-famous fashion designers know how to dress the body, but can they dress a home? From the pages of Dressing the Home: The Private Spaces of Top Fashion Designers (Abrams, $45, March 2008), it appears that at least 21 of them can.

The book, by Marie Bariller with 300 photographs by Guillaume de Laubier and a foreword by Dolce & Gabbana, tours the homes of such boldfaced names as Christian Louboutin, Betsey Johnson, Elie Saab, Diane von Furstenberg and D&G themselves, whose house in the South of France features such unexpected style pairings as Old Master paintings and zebra stripes on black lava stone.

"The idea is to show the strong links between (the designers') work and the decoration they create at home. It is very close," says Bariller, a former model. "They dare everything as they do at work."

For instance, Johnson's New York apartment is as eccentric as she and her fashions: quirky furniture, surfaces jammed with kooky collectibles, and everywhere her favorite color of sugary pink. The Parisian apartment of Louboutin (he of the celebrated red-soled spike heels) reflects his passion for Egypt, and of course, delectable shoes, which are scattered here and there on consoles.

Individual designers occasionally have opened their homes to design magazines; this is a first book of such spreads. The designers cooperated, and it shows in the lavish photography. Says Bariller, "Except the fact that they all show great taste for dressing up a home, there are as many differences — as in fashion."

Something old, something new

Antiques lovers fill their homes with old furniture, china and accessories — and now they can add custom-made antique hardwood floors.

The latest in "green" flooring shifts attention from sustainable wood toward wood reclaimed from old barns, warehouses and other antique buildings. Matt Stanton, owner of Copper Plank Custom Mill (copper plank.com ) in Scottsdale, Ariz., calls it Revival ("old wood, new life") flooring.

"We've put it in everything from modest homes to $10 million homes," Stanton says. "It's certified 100% green, it's aesthetically beautiful, structurally superior and made with authentic antique wood."

The wood is mostly oak, long-leaf yellow pine or chestnut and comes from old buildings around the world. Company "harvesters" find it and ship it to Arizona, where workers de-nail it by hand and dry it by kiln. The wood is then adhered to backer-board of nine-ply layers of Russian birch, which makes it especially stable and strong, Stanton says.

All of this costs about $16 to $25 a square foot installed, so it's aimed at the medium to high end of the market.

The floors come with an engraved plank containing the geographic origin and time period of the wood.