Josephine Keir celebrates 36 years as a rug seller

November 30, 2023 30

Customers have been walking all over Josephine Keir’s products for decades. That’s just the way she wants it.

Keir has now been in the rug business for 36 years. Her store, Josephine Keir Ltd. at Home, has been at The Crossings for eight years. It is her sixth Lewes location.

“I was in the Graves Building for 12 years. I was on Second Street for five years. Kings Highway for four-and-a-half. Third Street for a few,” she said.

Keir said she left downtown Lewes because of limited parking and because she was able to finally get something she had always wanted. “Tall ceilings. I’ve needed tall ceilings to put my rugs up, and I finally got them,” she said.

Keir has also had locations in Salisbury, Md., Milford and Bethany Beach over the years.

She is about to launch an online store.

Keir’s carpets come from halfway around the world, places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, northern India and Nepal. They are made of wool, by textile artists; no two are the same.

“They are made with hand-spun wools, mostly with natural dyes. The artists in rug making have license to create, whereas with production rugs, everything’s done off a computer grid,” Keir said.

She said each rug can take as long as a year to make, when you factor in the dyeing process.

Even the sheep that the wool comes from are different.

“We call them fat tail sheep. They’re from the mountainous regions of Afghanistan, Southwestern Iran and Turkey. Their wool is long and scraggly. It’s charcoal and cream and brown. It’s full of natural lanolin because life’s hard up there,” Keir said.

Keir said being a woman does not always go over well in some of the countries where her rugs are made.

“They don’t like women in general, and especially women in the rug business. They can be outright rude. But the suppliers I’ve worked with have been gracious and always treat me with respect,” Keir said.

She is also mindful of buying only socially responsible products from suppliers that do not use child labor.

Keir got into the rug business after spending summers in England.

“I fell in love with textiles in general. It was nothing for me to bring back a bolt of 100-year-old fabric and have pillows made. I just started paying more attention to carpets,” Keir said.

“I came onboard in the middle of what we call the renaissance of village rug making. The rugs are hand-knotted in village-like settings instead of factories. The older men did the dyeing. The women knotted the rugs. The older women spun the wool. You have these wonderful artist-driven creations,” she said.

Besides rugs, Keir sells furniture, paintings and pottery at her Lewes store.

She showed off hand-painted bowls and plates from Italy that she will debut at her annual in-store Christmas party Saturday, Dec. 9.

Keir’s advice for buying one of her high-end rugs is to design the room around the rug.

“You limit yourself if you don’t start with the rug,” she said.

Keir also said it is important to support local, small businesses. She said she can beat the prices and quality of major department stores.

“People will spend $5,000 on a rug from a catalog and they’re not happy when they get it,” she said. “I’m in business because I have clients who value what we do. But we have to continue that.”

Keir said she has customers who have been with her for 25 to 30 years.

“I have no plans to retire. I’ll probably sell rugs and paintings until I drop,” she said.

But her rugs will live on.

“The downside of this business is you sell somebody a product that’s going to last forever,” Keir said.

Josephine Keir Ltd. at Home is located at 33506 Crossing Ave., Unit 5, Lewes. For more information, go to www.josephinekeir.com or call 302-645-9047.