Elizabeth Eakins

Textile company known for hand-woven rugs and fabrics made from natural fibers and vegetable dyes. Founded in New York City in 1978 by Elizabeth Eakins, the company's design studio, yarn-dyeing, and hand-weaving operations are based in South Norwalk, Connecticut, while it maintains an active trade showroom in Manhattan. Eakins, a Pittsburgh native who studied at the California College of Arts & Crafts and learned to weave at age 11, also operates a retail store in Los Angeles and distributes through showrooms in cities including London, San Francisco, and Dallas, plus a licensed fabric line launched with Holland & Sherry in 2015. Her Private Reserve rug collection is handwoven from the fleece of Border Leicester sheep raised on her Kansas farm, and she has received the John Russel Pope Award for Interior Design (2015) and a Kansas Bankers Association Award for Soil Conservation (2016).