Bosfam makes carpets. A simple enough fact, but now I know exactly how many they make, how they make them and what it takes to make a traditional cilim, or Bosnian carpet. I have just done the inventory for the carpet gallery, which is housed in the building in Tuzla,. I also updated the inventory in a database. The database is entirely in Bosnian, so I first had to translate every single last word in order to understand what exactly I was doing. When I first came here I was amazed at how beautiful the carpets are. The pictures on the internet site for Bosfam just don’t do them justice. They each have their own personality. Some of the carpets are very ethnic, some are more modern and yet some are truly traditional. I have touched every single carpet we have here, measuring them, pricing them, taking pictures of them and always watching the women work on them in the workroom. I am basically living and breathing carpets. And yet, I still think they are beautiful. What I notice now is how unique each one of them is and how much skill these women have to be able to create these beautiful carpets. Nura and Sadeta have been working on a massive one, for an Italian lady and it was finished today. They started it about a month ago and have sometimes stayed here late at night to get it done in time. I made Nora get in the picture to hold up her work and I told her that it is beautiful. I’m a little jealous of the Italian lady who bought it, but then again I’ve got more carpets now than she’ll ever have.