Rug Money

Mary Anne Wise is a nationally recognised weaver, rug hooker, design teacher and curator. During multiple trips to Guatemala, she was moved by the relentless poverty and lack of opportunity for Maya women. In response, Mary Anne volunteered to teach a how-to rug-hooking workshop as a possible new income source for indigenous women. This single workshop eventually led to co-founding Multicolores, a non-profit rug-hooking cooperative in Guatemala. Cheryl Conway-Daly spent nearly twenty years as an academic researcher at universities in Northern Ireland and England, focusing on economic development and gender and equality. Her interest in working with grassroots organisations that focused on women's empowerment prompted her departure from academia, leading her to Guatemala in 2009. Cheryl joined the rug-hooking project in 2013. Her ongoing commitment to helping the rug-hooking artists improve the quality of their lives and her skilled and creative management of the project have been crucial to its success.

"You might start to read this book out of a passion for textiles in general, or rugs in specific, but you'll finish it because it says so much about how to do some good in this world." --Keith Recker, founder Hand/Eye magazine; Creative Director, International Folk Art Market