Starting in May 2022, Gage Goods began hosting once-monthly warehouse sales. We imagined them as a way to rotate out the extra furniture we used to style our rug photography, and to allow community members to shop our collection of rugs and other goods in-person. These soon took on a life of their own: our monthly warehouse sales have grown to be lively community gatherings: part marketplace and part party, where neighbors, collectors, and first-time visitors hunt for finds while enjoying music, conversation, and the thrill of discovery.

Through this store, I hope to help advance the cause of particularity; I hope to help you create a beautiful place. Whether or not you buy something here, I hope this site gives you an opportunity to learn about the practices, materials, and traditions that each of these objects exemplify. I hope that this showcase of goods will act as its own argument against generic decoration and the thoughtless filling of space. And if you buy something from this place, I hope to make the personal practices and traditions of rug-making something comprehensible and fun, so you can carry, and pass on, that knowledge as you pass on your rug.

I live in South Bend, Indiana. When not selling rugs, I enjoy the vibrant local breakfast scene and host dinner parties – because for me, and for this venture, goods are at their best when they bring people together.

You could call it a hobby that got a little out of hand.

In 2014, I moved to Turkey on a Fulbright scholarship. I spent the next year living and working in the central Turkish city of Tokat. When it came time to leave, I wanted to bring home a memento that would do honor to the rich year I had spent in the city. While at the town’s antique market I found a huge early 20th century kilim rug. The rug dealer explained that the rug was quintessentially Tokat: its wool came from Tokat’s sheep; its dyes from plants local to Tokat; the designs particular to Tokat’s rug-making traditions. This rug couldn’t be from just anywhere; it was rooted in and palpably the product of a particular place and time.

The rug has been with me ever since, and every time I look at it I am reminded of the richness of the year I lived in Turkey. It reminds me of all the friendships, jokes, laughter, and learning that year contained. As a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame, I studied the art, architecture, and theology of the Eastern Roman Empire. While doing so, I traveled back and forth between school in Indiana and research in Turkey and Azerbaijan. I came to appreciate and understand the artistry behind not just eastern Anatolian rugs, like my rug from Tokat, but of the entire process of rug-making as it developed throughout the history of the region.

In 2018, I started selling rugs to friends and neighbors and was met with such an enthusiastic response I decided to make my collection available online. The Gage Goods online shop was launched in 2020.  Since then, I’ve expanded my network of friends in the trade and the scope of the goods we offer. In addition to rugs, Gage Goods sources Turkish towels, kilim pillow covers, vintage cars, rare books, and a variety of other fine goods that we accumulate while out rug hunting.