Langhorne’s Role in the Massive Minnesota State Capitol Restoration

It’s not at all unusual for Langhorne to be involved in major historic restoration projects. As a circa 1930 business—and one of two remaining Wilton Jacquard mills in the U.S.—our mill and team are simply able to design and weave floor traditional wool coverings in ways other manufacturers cannot. But what is unusual is for us to be a part of something as big as the Minnesota State Capitol Restoration Project. The multi-year, $309.674 million undertaking has restored one of the country’s grandest state houses to its turn-of-the-century glory—modernizing while burnishing, leaving history unscathed. We were honored to accept the job of re-creating a carpet for the elegant and gilded Governor’s Reception Room, a space the state’s highest official uses for speeches and formal gatherings.

With a gentle suggestion from our Philadelphia friend Gail Winkler—who, with partner Roger W. Moss, quite literally wrote the book on restoring 19th Century American buildings—Minneapolis-based HGA Architects and Engineers found us to create the carpet. HGA wanted an American mill with expertise in historic reproduction, said senior associate and project architect Kimberly Sandbulte, “Langhorne was called out as being the best, if not the only, American mill that could produce a product similar to the original carpet.”

That was in 2002. In 2017, the state house reopened for business. Sandbulte and her team predict the restoration will endure heartily into the next century. We tend to agree.

Gacek Design Group Visits Langhorne Carpet Company

Bill Morrow (left) meets with Gacek Design Group

On Friday, December 16, Langhorne Carpets welcomed Gacek Design Group for a tour of our historic Penndel mill. Langhorne’s own Bill Morrow led the group around our facility, from the Jacquard room to finishing, past narrow and broad looms, and through our design archives. We were delighted the talented firm from New Hope, PA chose to spend their valuable time visiting us. The reason for their visit?

“Over time, you really learn to value expertise,” said Lori Olzewski, the firm’s director of marketing and business development. “One of the things we like to do is build what we call experiential design: Our designs tell a story. They’re based on how people live in a home, on experiences. We were really drawn to the experience of the mill, how differentiated it is.”

Founded in 2005 by Richard Gacek, the interior design and architectural consulting group is known
for their timeless and classic designs for both private and commercial clients. Their portfolio of work spans historic residences, modern farmhouses, traditional apartments, elegant beach houses and classic mountain retreats. They view Langhorne as a natural choice for their work.

“Carpet making is a lost art,” said Olzewski. “At Langhorne, you can customize, personalize. We value Langhorne’s expertise, and our clients value that expertise.”






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Season's Greetings From Langhorne Carpet Company - An American Classic

When our great grandfather and grandfather founded LanghorneCarpets in 1930, our company was one of many thriving American manufacturers. Today, our Bucks County, PA-based, family-run business is a rarity in our region and in our country.

Langhorne began with six “velvet” looms purchased from Henry Ford after his company found them too complicated, cumbersome, and costly for a mass producer of “affordable” automobiles to run. Our team, our family, took on the challenge of weaving the highest quality Jacquard Wilton wool carpets anywhere. We did not make carpets for car interiors, but instead for the interiors of fine homes and iconic structures in the U.S. and abroad. More than 80 years later, we proudly weave our carpets using the same methods our ancestors did. Technology has changed and assisted us along the way, but we’d be nowhere without the wise, dedicated and diligent workers and artisans of Langhorne Carpet.

In this season of celebrating and giving, of gathering with family and friends, we’d like to take a moment to honor our staff—the Langhorne family. Heartfelt gratitude to: Andy, Saul, Jose, Benny, Hector Pagan, Cheka, Wanda, John, Sue, Felipa, Vanessa, Danielle, Carmen, Ana, Maria, June, Kim, Manny, Diane, Michelle, Andi, Mark, Jerry, Lydia, Matt, Luis, Oti, Grace and Hector.

Thank you. Wishing you and your families, both at home and at work and in your communities, healthy and happy holidays and all the best for 2017.

Cozy up on one of our carpets. We promise it’ll do you a world of good.

Picture courtesy of the Bucks County Courier Times

Langhorne Carpet Company Reveals Restored Mill Sign

The 109 year-old red brick exterior of our Wilton Jacquard mill stands tall with a new hand-painted sign. Thanks to our friends at the Vital Signs project of Temple Contemporary, Langhorne Carpets proudly reveals a thoroughly restored company mural along Route 1 in historic Penndel, Bucks County.

The sign now proudly reads:

Langhorne Carpet Company

Manufacturers of the Unusual

The Foundation of Fine Interiors^®
Wilton Carpet

Penndel Proud

Since 1930

The Morrow family would like to thank Robert Blackson and Sarah Biemiller of Temple Contemporary,  Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Assistant Director of Exhibitions, respectively, for including our family-run company among the multi-generational Philadelphia-area businesses who have benefited from Vital Signs. We’d also like to thank painter William Sanders and his team of Lauren West, Justin Phillips, Dan Sanders, and Denise Botcheos, for their exquisite work to re-create a sign Langhorne’s founders would be proud of. Thanks, too, to Mural Arts Philadelphia, co-founder of Vital Signs with Temple Contemporary in 2013, for loaning the scaffolding that allowed the group of talented local artists to complete the 20’-by-40’ mural.

Please join our team and representatives of the Borough of Penndel for an official reveal of the restored sign at 1 p.m. on Thursday, December 1, 2016.

Langhorne Carpet Company Exterior Sign Makeover!

If you’ve passed by Langhorne Carpets on Route 1 (West Lincoln Highway) in Penndel lately, you might have noticed some extra activity. Scaffolding has gone up, down, and up again along the red brick wall that faces the busy Bucks County thoroughfare.

The brick exterior of our Wilton Jacquard mill has seen more than a century of changes. When it was built in 1907, the structure was an  architectural pioneer because of its free-standing roof—no supporting beams. For generations, our mill has withstood time’s tests. Alas, over the decades, the hand-painted mural outside hasn’t had such luck. Through the years, environmental and man-made conditions have taken their toll. Every few decades, we’ve had to repaint it.

This time, we’ve gone a step further. We joined up with Vital Signs, a project founded in 2013 by our friends at Temple Contemporary (part of the University’s Tyler School of Art) and Mural Arts Philadelphia. Vital Signs pairs active, multi-generation Philadelphia-area businesses with local artists to restore hand-painted exterior signs to their original glory.

For the past few months, we’ve worked with artists and re-pointers to get our wall back into shape. We’re excited to invite the public to an official reveal of the restored sign at 1 p.m. on Thursday, December 1, 2016!

Sculptor Finds Creative Use for Langhorne Carpets Jacquards!

Activity at our mill seems to increase in autumn. This season is no exception: Langhorne Carpets family has been busy making our new Pixels, awaiting the installation of a new historic reproduction in a grand government building, and ramping up our collaborations with cutting-edge designers.

Still, we wanted to stop to recognize the creativity of longtime Morrow family friend Edward Murphy, a Buckingham, Pennsylvania-based artist who re-purposed a box of our hand-punched cardboard Jacquards in his studio.

Murphy is a sculptor known for his exploration and manipulation of geometric shapes, and his use of found natural objects such as bark and old wood. He shares studio space with his wife, a painter. The couple works side by side in a late-19th century blacksmith’s barn on their countryside property. Years ago, Ed brought home a box of unused Jacquards—the traditional, rectangular hole-perforated cards that run through our looms, dictating the pattern of each of our carpets—from the mill, envisioning using them for a future project. For eight years, those Jacquards sat idle. Then he decided to renovate the barn, turn the second floor into an office, and use the cards as a window treatment.

A large window looks southwesterly onto the artists’ property, offering a stunning view of nearby farms. But this summer was a hot one. The Murphys needed relief from the sun streaming into their office. That’s when Ed remembered his already-strung cards. “I just flashed on it. The cards were exactly the right size,” he recalled. He screwed them in place, and, behold: “A beautiful pattern of dots that are just random enough let in just enough light, and disperses the pattern into the room.”

Langhorne Carpets applauds our friend Ed Murphy’s creative reuse—and always welcomes creative thinkers and makers to our Penndel, Bucks County mill for tours and inspiration.

Langhorne Carpet Restoration Graces the 1786 Physick House in Philadelphia

Langhorne Carpet Company is proud to have a place of honor inside one of the most prominent historic homes in the Society Hill section of Philadelphia. The circa 1786 Physick House belonged Dr. Phillip Syng Physick (1768-1837), the Father of American surgery, physician to James and Dolley Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall, Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Rush.

In the 18th century, the Physick House was the largest residence in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Today, the attraction is open to the public and serves as an elegant example of both Empire and Federal styles—and of Dr. Physick’s less-than-elegant 19th-century surgical instruments. When lauded Society Hill-based interior designer and historic restoration expert Gail Caskey Winkler, PhD, FASID, asked Langhorne Carpets to create a carpet for the parlor in the Physick House, the Morrow family gladly accepted the opportunity to be part of the restoration.

Along with partner Roger W. Moss, PhD, Winkler quite literally wrote the book on the restoration of late 18th through 19th century American buildings. In order to recreate the Physick House’s interior authentically, she chose a carpet pattern that had graced the floor of the reception room in the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, a National Historical Landmark that housed the Virginia General Assembly, the oldest legislative body in the Western Hemisphere. For the Virginia State Capitol, Winkler recreated a grand woven carpet featuring large medallions in shades of gold and tan that repeat on a terracotta background. For the Physick House, she set those same medallions against an intense green background to match the home’s wallpaper and décor. The pattern is now part of Langhorne Carpets’ Capitol collection.

We encourage you to view both Langhorne Carpets’ contribution to—and all of—the Physick House at 321 South Fourth Street in Philadelphia. For information about visiting this and other Philadelphia landmarks, go to philalandmarks.org