Carpet Gets Deserved Spotlight by Werner Braun

Carpets for Airports: Carpet Gets the Spotlight It Deserves by Werner Braun

Carpet and Rug Institute President Werner Braun’s February 5, 2011 column in Dalton’s Daily Citizen deals with a funny article that appeared on CRI’s blog, titled “Happy Landings: A Frequent Traveler Calls Attention to the Colorful World of Airport Carpet.” The blog post describes a weird, but fascinating, website called Carpets for Airports that features photographs of the carpet in airports all over the world. The site was put together by an author named George Pendle, a world traveler who also happens to be keenly interested in carpet.

In his column titled "Carpet finally gets spotlight it deserves", Mr. Braun comments:

“I can understand that — carpet is one of my favorite topics, too. Pendle’s site is called Carpets for Airports (carpetsforairports.com), and anyone who visits the site will see right away they are in for an experience that is as much comic monologue as travelogue.

“From Santiago to Sydney, from Bishkek to Boston, the airport carpet sings out its inviolable song, a sign of man’s refusal to go drably into that dark night of international travel. Such aesthetic intimacy, poetry and passion has for too long gone unnoticed by the modern traveler. Until now.”

See what I mean?

Pendle has garnered quite a bit of attention for his quirky site. He was featured in an article in the Los Angeles Times, and the CRI blog post about Carpets for Airports was mentioned by Floor Covering News publisher and well-known flooring industry icon Al Wahnon in one of the last columns he penned before his death earlier this week. On why he started Carpets for Airports, Pendle told the LA Times, “Flooring is considered mundane. We’re all too busy looking at the sky and the planes to look at the ground beneath us. So I thought it would be a fun experiment to compare and contrast airport carpets from around the world.”

Now, that’s a thought. Suppose next time I miss a flight, I blame it on the carpet and not the airline? That could make for happier travels, don’t you think?

In any case, I recommend you check out carpetsforairports.com. It’s fun and funny, and best of all, it calls attention to carpet, its beauty (or strangeness in some cases), and reminds us all of how important carpet is to our overall impressions of our surroundings. Carpet is quieter, it’s safer to walk on, and it adds unmistakable warmth and beauty to homes, schools, businesses and, of course, airports.

Pendle welcomes photographs to the site, saying, “All carpets gratefully received. All photographs fully credited.”

That sounds like an offer worth considering. Next time I’m stuck in an airport gate with nothing to do and a little time on my hands, I think I’ll take out my camera and look down. Who’s with me? It’s time carpet got the spotlight it deserves, in airports and everywhere else it is used to enhance the lives of the people who live with it and on it.

Happy travels, everyone!”

Thank you, Werner.

~Bethany