Shanghai can be cold in the winter. And it was especially cold in February of 2005, when we visited our Mandarin-speaking daughter to help celebrate her 21st birthday. While she was studying during the day, we combed the city, searching for interesting shops and exploring aspects of China that were fast being squeezed by progress and expansion and unbelievable productivity.

Because the two of us share a lifelong passion for fabric, furniture, architecture and design (interior designers and restoration architects are not easily calmed), we decided to try to track down some of the blue and white cottons of China about which we had read in an old guidebook. It is known as “Blue Nankeen”.

Over the course of our stay, as we dug deeper into the neighborhoods of the city, we learned how a small number of workshops were still working with this historic and elusive cloth, about the cotton bolts which arrived periodically from distant villages in the countryside, and about how this fabric and its processes were rapidly becoming an endangered species. As is the case with so many other arts and crafts around the world, industrialization was taking over the economy and pushing aside the traditional handicrafts of many centuries past.

To rescue and sustain this extraordinary craft would not be easy. The challenge, we came to believe, was how to provide a level of support for the "old ways", to create a market in which the traditional methods of production could ensure a livelihood for those still working in these ancient art forms, and then hopefully attract others to join them in order to perpetuate this element of Chinese culture.

And so, the Tiverton Trading Company was born.

OUR PHILANTHROPY

Today, in addition to designing and importing a line of products, we are seeking ways to support this ancient, handcrafted art form. A percentage of our online sales go to the China Hand-Print Blue Nankeen Exhibition Hall and the China Nantong Blue Calico Art Gallery. Both located in China, these galleries educate the public as well as display examples using the Blue Nankeen process. In the United States, we support the National Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. and the textile department of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence, Rhode Island.

ABOUT THE OWNERS

Anne Page began her professional life in the Knoll showroom textiles department, following Florence Knoll’s interest in fabrics as an essential element of design. For thirty years she had her own interior design practice, designing residential, office and club interiors. Charles Page founded an architectural practice specializing in the conservation and rehabilitation of historic structures. His many associations in that field included the creation of the Foundation for San Francisco’s Architectural Heritage and service as a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Anne and Charles are currently furthering their design interests at the Rhode Island School of Design (Anne in drawing/painting and Charles in photography/computer graphics).  They live with their twelve year-old yellow Labrador in rural Rhode Island, looking out to the Atlantic Ocean.