FACES
From Souks to Storied Rugs
Denise Kelly and Shelby Lynch created Anthology Textiles to cut out intermediaries, ensuring women artisans earn more and that customers connect with the stories behind each rug.
By Louisa Wilson. Photos by Shelby Lynch.
Kelly (blue shirt) and Lynch (pink shirt) pictured with members of a weaving co-operative in the town of M'Rirt. Photo credit: Abdo Achour
The idea for Anthology Textiles — a women-owned company offering sustainable Moroccan rugs — began in a souk, where Denise Kelly, MS ’20, was captivated by handwoven rugs and the stories behind them.
“I’ve always had a passion for textiles, and the textiles in Morocco were amazing,” she recalls. “The men in the souks talked about the women who made them, about the labor of love and family tradition.”
After traveling through Morocco with her friend and fellow Urban Strategy alumna, Shelby Lynch, MS ’20, she and Lynch began to dream about building an artisan rug business sourced directly from women weavers in Morocco. “Rug making is passed down through the generations,” says Lynch. “There are beautiful stories of women learning the craft by weaving with their mothers and aunts. The rugs themselves often tell a story through the symbology and colors the artisan has used.”
In addition to a mutual love of travel, Kelly and Lynch shared a background in Drexel’s Urban Strategy program at the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, where they met as master’s students. Courses like Civic Engagement and Participatory Methods and Cities and Climate Change challenged them to think critically about how communities organize, how equity takes shape, and how sustainability must be built into planning.
In their Civic Engagement and Participatory Methods course, they had worked side by side with community members around a common cause. For both Kelly and Lynch, the experience deepened their understanding of marginalized communities and made the concept of social impact more real. Those lessons became a foundation for their business model.
Cutting out intermediaries was key so they could ensure that a percentage of each sale goes directly back to the artisans. “There are a lot of layers between the artist and a customer,” Lynch explains. “By the time a rug is sold to the final customer, the cost is very different from what the actual rug makers receive. The final customer is likely to never know who made their rug or what the story behind it is. What Anthology Textiles does is cut out the added layers, so the women can earn more, and the customer can appreciate both the labor and love that goes into each rug.”
Finding the right inventory partners took legwork. With help from a Moroccan friend, Abdo, who ran local tours through the Secret Morocco Adventure Tours agency, the founders identified eight co-ops that matched their criteria: women-owned, 100% handmade, natural wool and dyes, no harsh chemicals.
In September 2024, they returned to Morocco for their first buying trip, traveling into the Atlas Mountains to meet the women behind the work. “We experienced their families, their villages, their workspaces and their looms,” Kelly recalls. Lynch remembers being welcomed with warmth: “One artist, Rabia, took us to three co-ops. We had lunch with her and her brother and some of her sisters. They made us tea, lunch, and we spent time together enjoying the meal.”
Pictured: The Old Medina historic marketplace in Tangier.
“In the souks, we never handed money to a single woman, but we kept hearing about the amazing women artists behind the scenes creating these textiles. We decided that the business model needed to highlight the artists. The social impact was going to be working directly with women-owned and -managed co-ops and putting a percentage of the profits back into those co-ops.”
Echoing the values of their Civic Engagement and Participatory Methods course of finding common ground and purpose, Kelly says, “We asked many questions while we were there, and we gained an understanding of how things work, not just economically, but socially,” she says. “There were cultural aspects we needed to learn, and it helped us tremendously.”
Such moments of cultural connection affirmed for them the importance of storytelling to the company’s mission. Each rug offered online features the story of its maker, and a “Meet the Artist” blog series delves further into artisans’ lives.
The founders see a tangible impact of their business. “It’s unbelievable how much these dollars mean to their families and the whole village,” says Kelly. “Artists, like Naima, who’s a single mother — she didn’t have the chance to go to school herself. She does this work so she can give her children access to education.”
Today, Anthology Textiles partners with multiple co-ops and has also established its own — Co-op Anthology — in the Sahara region of Morocco. Looking ahead, the founders dream of constructing a sustainable, net-zero building and even raising their own sheep to support wool production. “We care about the environment, so we want to control how sustainable the business is,” Lynch says.
For Kelly, the venture fulfills both personal and professional values: “At this point in my life, it’s imperative that my work have positive social and economic impacts, both professionally and personally.”
Pictured: Artisan Naima demonstrates her weaving technique on a work in progress at her weaving co-operative in Ait Yadine.
Read more stories from this issue of Drexel Magazine.
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