Birmingham, Alabama’s first custom rug design studio recently opened in a busy Downtown district — and it’s already making waves. Situated alongside local favorite restaurants and galleries, English Village Lane joins a group of beloved businesses known for unparalleled creativity. Meet Owner Angie Burge, and see how the colorful and cleverly branded English Village Lane shares “the love of the loom.”
Angie describes herself as textile-obsessed. As it happens, COVID kicked that obsession into high gear when Angie found herself with more time to redecorate her home and play around with her rugs. This quickly turned into a passion that manifested itself into an Instagram account.
Within eight months, Angie left her corporate job and launched the English Village Lane website in September 2022. “I was fascinated with the intricacies of the quality of rugs and how they were made, and I didn’t see anyone talking about the level of customization that was available,” she explains.
Customization and quality are at the heart of all of English Village Lane’s designs, as each one is designed and hand-sketched by the team. Once a design is complete, the team sources looms directly from India. After researching and testing many different countries of origin, Angie discovered that the manufacturers in India offered unparalleled quality — in material, color, and pricing.
English Village Lane’s generational artisans use the imported Indian looms to create masterful New Zealand wool rugs with over 150 knots per square inch. They also create Mohair wool rugs, Indian- or Pakistani-style dhurrie rugs, Moroccan Berber rugs, and more. The bottom line? This means you can have a handmade eight-by-10 Turkish hand-knotted (that’s 288,000 knots!) custom-made rug in as few as 120 days.
EVL’s rugs aren’t just beautiful, though. One of Angie’s rug obsessions is the Oushak rug, characterized by loose knots and long piles — this is due to the high-quality wool used in production. The quality, softness, and beauty make an Oushak rug a design lover’s dream. Even better, it can endure a mess and retain its quality for a long time.
“I purchased them for the look, but I fell in love with their endurance. I had to have them all over my home the moment my child dropped her spaghetti on our wool Oushak, and it came out with dish soap and water,” Angie shares.
Angie recognizes the stress of choosing the perfect rug and pulling the trigger on a purchase. With that in mind, she has unveiled a game-changing level of customization. “When I was purchasing rugs for my own home, nobody told me I could customize the size or colors to get exactly what I wanted,” she tells us. English Village Lane prioritizes creating the exact size, shape (no matter how odd), and color you need in approximately four months.
The true magic of The Magic City lies in its trailblazers, and Angie Burge is undoubtedly on that list. She saw the intimidating and impersonal process of purchasing a rug and splashed it with color and customization, transforming a decor item into a steadfast anchor of your home — the rug on which your children play, the piece under your family dinner table, that pop of pink in your new baby’s nursery, or the first item rolled out in your new home.
Angie says it best: “We are trying to move this city forward, and it’s electric to watch one thing unfold after the next.”
Thank you, Angie, for sharing the story of English Village Lane with us!
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