Custom Wool Braided Rugs For Every Decor
By Lee Caldwell
Entering the Country Braid House in Tilton is a voyage into an ocean of color and pattern. Everywhere you look are hand-made woolen braided rugs: underfoot, piled high on tables, hanging from the walls, or hanging on racks from the ceiling.
Colors range from subtle earth tones to the bright and the colorful. Shapes are round, Nutting (a unique and traditional New England shape named after artist/author Wallace Nutting), square, hearts, ovals, rectangular, hexagonal, or intriguing combinations of hooked and braided rugs. Each is a unique work of art.
President Sarah Jurta, an engineer by trade, is a third-generation rug-maker. Proudly, she launches into the saga of her family’s journey in the rug trade.
“My grandfather, George Jurta, was the head mechanic of the J.P. Stevens woolen mill. It was said that, ‘If George can’t fix it, it is time to throw it away.’
“With only an eighth-grade education, he invented a braiding machine that braids the wool into a consistent tight braid.”
Patented in 1968, the seven machines made by George are still in use at the Country Braid House. They also use a cutting machine designed and built by George. It cuts the wool into the narrow strips which are fed on rolls into the braiding machine.
Sarah goes on, “The braiding machines need to be watched. There is a knack to learning how to use them. It is an art form.”
She continues, “The business started with Marion (wife) and George Jurta; then it was my mother, Jan Jurta, with Marion Jurta; then my mom, Jan, for 35 years. Five years ago, I convinced my husband to move up here from Boston to take over the business.
“We are a niche business that specializes in custom rugs. A client will bring in samples of their wallpaper or paint chips or fabric and we will go to the sample wall to select the wool and decide on the colors, pattern, size, shape, and design of the rug.”
The sample wall, much like a paint fan, has strips of colorful wool with hues to complement or contrast in the finished product.
Sarah continues, “There is a lot of math involved in the process. On the computer, we can also do electronic renderings of what the rug will look like when completed. We can also pull up renderings of previous rugs.
“Our rugs are authentic. We only use new wool and wool-blend fabric to make them. We buy wool on bolts from distributors in the United States. Unfortunately, wool is getting harder and harder to find.
“The braids are then hand-laced and the hand-lacing is concealed within the braids. The rugs are beautiful, durable, and reversible.”
Leaving the display room, she drifts into the cutting, braiding, and lacing workroom where design and operations manager Ryan Franklin demonstrates the art of using the braiding machine, feeding strips of wool into the machine while a tight, symmetrical braid emerges. An 8 by 10 rug takes 2 to 2.5 days to braid using the machine.
The center of the room is dominated by a huge table, as hand-lacing the rugs must be completed on a flat surface. Sarah stated that their largest custom-made braided rug was 10 feet by 54 feet. Its pink and blue braids are currently gracing the floor of a New York City apartment. Her mother, Jan, had to rent the Tilton Train Station to have a space large enough to hand-lace it.
Today, Ryan is hand-lacing a rectangular rug of mermaid-colored blues and greens, commissioned by interior designer Kristina Crestin. Rug design specialist Grace Allaire then pulls up the computer screen that shows the rug’s electronic rendering.
“We do work with interior designers as well as individual clients,” says Sarah. “One of my favorite things is helping people design a custom rug and hearing comments like, ‘It is so much prettier than I imagined.’ One of our rugs, destined for a beach house, was designed with beige and cream wool to capture the ambiance of beach sand.
“Braided rugs can be used with many different types of decor. Our rugs have gone as far away as Uruguay and have been featured in such publications as Architectural Digest, House and Garden, Country Living, Traditional Home, Southern Accents, and Yankee Magazine.”
Looking forward, Sarah is hoping to create a partnership with a local high school where students will come in and potentially design and then execute their own rug designs.
In addition to creating custom braided rugs, Country Braid House offers a repair service for vintage hand-made braided rugs and DIY kits for those who want to attempt to braid their own rugs. They sell wool remnants, have a limited number of hooked rugs for sale, and have a selection of both new and used in-stock authentic braided rugs. They also sell braided chair pads, stair runners, and stair treads.
Country Braid House is located at 462 Main Street in Tilton, with a phone at 603-286-4511. They have an extensive informational website at www.countrybraidhouse.com.
Maple Sugaring: A Family Tradition
The art of maple sugaring at the Eldridge Family Sugar House and Ice Cream Shop in Tamworth is very much a family affair.
Upon arrival, I was greeted by young family members Greyson and Rylee Theriault who then made a mad dash to summon Terri Eldridge, Scott Eldridge, and Erica Theriault for the interview. Having done his duty, Greyson returned to playing with his trucks, later disappearing into a back room.
Other family members include Brandon Eldridge, Matt Theriault, Brittaney Eldridge, Adalynne Eldridge, and Bodie Eldridge.
With Terri, Scott, Erica, and Rylee all chiming in, they began to recount the story of how, in 2015, the father-and-son duo of Scott and Brandon Eldridge began boiling maple sap with a custom-built barrel stove in the backyard. In 2016, they built their first sugar house, with a wood-fired 2-foot by 4-foot evaporator. In 2017, they had 400 taps. In 2019, they purchased a 2.5-foot by 8-foot oil-fired evaporator, and in 2020 built their new building, which has expanded to have an ice cream shop and a retail area.
Scott is the contact person for all things related to maple sugaring. He states that the sugaring season is unpredictable, usually 5 to 6 weeks between the end of February and into March, but it can be “different every year” as it requires a specific combination of warm days and cold nights.
Because the season is short, it requires a lot of hard work, and the entire family pitches in.
Using blue tubing (in lieu of the traditional sap buckets), the family taps 500 trees in Tamworth, 1,100 in Moultonborough, and 500 in Ossipee. (Over Maple Weekend, they do tap a few trees with the traditional buckets.) After boiling the sap (typically 40 gallons of sap makes 1 gallon of syrup, but it can vary), the Eldridge family produces around 430 gallons of syrup. Syrup then is graded into classifications as golden, amber, and dark.
Erica stated that many people are not familiar with the maple sugaring process. She goes on to add that the strangest question she was asked involved the blue tubing used to carry the maple sap from the trees. “Is that what you use to collect the honey?” Dumfounded, she explained that honey comes from bees, not trees.
Erica and Terri describe Brandon Eldridge as “the big idea person” in the family. While working together, all the family members bounce ideas off each other, and Terri describes the family camaraderie as her favorite part of the mad rush during the maple sugaring season. Erica states that the maple syrup grading, using the Hanna scale of light transparency, is her favorite part of the process. “You never know what you are going to get,” she said.
Rylee then stated that her favorite part is “eating the maple ice cream.”
In addition to serving maple-flavored soft-serve ice cream, the Ice Cream Shop has 30 other flavors of ice cream. Over the past year, the kitchen has been expanded to include maple-related “grab-and-go” items and a 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. cafe for breakfast and lunch. Hours and days change according to the seasons.
Plans are in the works to expand their store to create a “one-stop shop for campers.” In addition to carrying maple products, they plan to carry camping items and “lake” items, US-made products from local vendors, small batch/small business items, and local meat and eggs.
The Eldridge/Theriault family also is dedicated to helping the community. They have done school tours with Rylee as a guide, have donated syrup and baskets for fundraising pancake breakfasts, contributed to school supply drives, and have participated in Thankful Thursdays, where non-profit organizations are donated a percentage of the sales.
Maple Weekend 2024 is slated for March 16 and 17. Visitors to the Eldridge Family Sugar House and Ice Cream Shop will be able to view the entire process, from tree to evaporation. There will be guided tours. Sap will be boiling on the evaporator. Offered will be a tasting of warm syrup, sugar on snow, maple products, maple-flavored soft-serve ice cream, and maple cotton candy.
The Eldridge Family Sugarhouse and Ice Cream Shop is located at 183 Plains Road (Route 41) in Tamworth. Phone number is 603-252-7125, the website is https://www.eldridgefamilysugarhouse.net/. Hours and days vary with the seasons.