Photo by Ingrid Schnader.
Mary Payton Davis and her mother, Vicki Noah, are surrounded by handwoven rugs that they sell out of Davis’ home on Dolly Ridge Road in Vestavia Hills.
Vestavia Hills resident Mary Payton Davis works 60 hours a week as a physician’s assistant at UAB, but when she comes home, she transforms into a textile connoisseur.
Together with her mother, Vicki Noah, they import hand woven, hand-dyed rugs from Turkey and sell them on social media. Their new business is called Ancient Thread, a name which reflects their appreciation for “old-world craftsmanship.”
Davis got the idea for the business over the past three years during her search for a new living room rug. She wanted it to be hand woven, but she said she realized how expensive these rugs can get. She said she realized that many rugs are 50 to 75 percent marked up.
“Every middle man is a price up, a step up,” she said. “So I just started digging into how to get to the first person in line so I’m not digging through five people to get them.”
She found a contact in Turkey who barely spoke any English and ordered her first 12 rugs in December. Noah felt nervous about her daughter’s new adventure at first.
“You just spent a whole bunch of money with someone you do not know,” she said. “They are in a totally different country. You have no recourse whatsoever.”
But by doing it this way, Davis is able to cut out the middleman and has found a way to make handwoven rugs more affordable for people who shop with her. She sells her rugs out of her home on Dolly Ridge Road and doesn’t have any overhead.
“Coming straight from the people who actually weave them and can mend them is excellent,” Davis said. “You can get them custom made and still be within a relatively good price range.”
Some of the rugs they sell are vintage rugs that were made 40 or more years ago, but most of the rugs they purchase are made from unweaving old rugs and using the wool to make a new rug.
“The wool is not from old rugs that you would never want to unweave,” Davis said. “They’re like prayer rugs, very thin, almost like blankets.”
She said the imperfections of a handwoven rug are her favorite part. On one rug, she pointed out three distinct lines. She learned that these imperfections are from where three different women were working on the rug and tied it off where they met one another. She also said she likes transitional rugs.
“You see new things about it every time you look at it,” she said. “Because it’s not the same across the rug — it transitions through the whole thing.”
An added benefit of being a part of this business is that it offers Davis a release from work. She said she loves her job but that it can rip your heart out.
“There was a period of time in a three month span where I had 18 patients pass away on me,” she said. “So although it can be very rewarding, it also has some aspects of it that can be devastating.”
She would come home crying to her husband, and even though he didn’t know her patients, he would cry too after listening to her stories. Now, instead of coming home upset about her patients, she looks at photos of rugs and gets excited about which ones to order next.
“I think after having done it for coming up on three years and just headfirst in it, I really needed something to pull me out of it a little bit,” she said.
Even though it can be difficult starting a business with a family member, Davis says they make the business work by being open with one another.
“We’ve always been so close,” she said. “I don’t think that we ever hold anything back from one another, so with that comes not building up any problems or issues.”
Noah, who lives in Athens, Alabama, said it’s been great seeing Davis much more since they started this business together.
“And it’s something we have in common,” Noah said. “We’ve both always liked pretty things, and I’ve always liked textiles and fabrics.”
Customers can browse through and purchase rugs by visiting @ancientthread on Instagram.
“We’re excited about it,” Noah said. “We have big visions and big dreams.”
