The mountainous landscape of eastern Turkey is arid in the summer and deep in snow in the winter. Woven Legends weaves carpets in over 150 towns and villages scattered throughout eastern Turkey, employing over 10,000 weavers and nearly as many handspinners of woolen yarn.
					It is a peculiarity of the Oriental carpet trade that the buyer often knows less about the carpet at hand than they do about the contents of a box of cereal, let alone the components of an automobile. And what about the social context in which the carpet is made? What is the relationship to the community in which they work? Woven Legends has created a vital dynamic among the craftspeople and artisans they employ in Turkey by re-establishing the ancient traditions of dyeing and wool spinning, thereby employing thousands of people in valuable work formerly done by machines; and by reviving the weaver's central role as interpreter of design, a role which has been missing for nearly a century, as overzealous producers sought to minimize variation, even to mimic the "perfection" of machine-made products. In defining the ideal balance between maker and consumer, William Morris said it most clearly: "To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it."
			Hürü Yasar, a weaver from Cavdarhisar, Turkey,
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