04.10.03
The Washington Post
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p. H3

Luxury Afoot on 14th Street

Timothy Paul, a new carpet and textile shop at 14th Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW, has no big piles of rugs to fold back, no swinging racks of hanging carpets to flip through and no calculator-wielding salespeople ready to pounce every time the door opens. It's just Timothy Paul Worrell; his wife, Mia Backman Worrell; and a quiet Tibetan-born man who helps with what heavy lifting there is. "We wanted the store to be more like a gallery, like SoHo was before it became SoHo," says Timothy Worrell, the former manager of Odegard, a high-end rug showroom at the Washington Design Center. "We didn't want to be everything to everyone. We carry a bit of everything that's different."

The Worrells, both 38, offer rugs, fabric and lighting from a limited number of boutique lines, most of which have no other representation in the Washington area. The showroomlike shop in a former discount warehouse attracts a clientele heavy on interior designers and architects, but is fundamentally a retail operation. "We're here on weekends, and we want to be accessible to everyone," says Mia Backman Worrell, who last worked for Donghia, a furniture, textiles and accessories studio in New York.

Room-size (8-by-10) carpets are $2,500 to $8,000, but there are smaller rugs at smaller prices. Fabrics, which include hand-blocked textiles, cost from $30 to $140 per yard.

"Overall, I'd say we're on the higher end of things," says Timothy Worrell. "But everything we sell is handmade from natural fibers. No broadloom, no nylon." And no busy Oriental-style patterns. Think solids in chocolate brown silk, a vermilion morning glory print, muted stripes reminiscent of colonial hooked runners. "And no piles," says Timothy Worrell. "They just make rugs look ordinary."