At home in Kansas, married couple Elizabeth Eakins and Jerry Wigglesworth, shepherds and croppers since 2002, are hands-on with their flock of Border Leicester sheep. They use a mixture of preventative care and genetic chronicling to achieve superlative fleece.
One of Elizabeth Eakins’ prized Border Leicester sheep, whose wool will become one of her handwoven rugs.
“Limestone is to Kansas what trees are to Connecticut,” says Eakins, describing the plentiful hand-chiseled locally quarried stone from which Swedish builders fashioned the original 1846 dwelling.
Scandinavian influence continues in the dining room where an antique dining table and chairs from Circa Antiques complement Elizabeth Eakins’s cotton Elkhorn Stripe rug and her own linen upholstery fabrics. The chandelier belonged to Wigglesworth’s mother.
Wool, durable and so perfect for dyeing, is Eakins’s longtime favorite fiber. To ensure the most lustrous and strong staple from their sheep, she and Wigglesworth fortify the animals’ diet with minerals and keep them outside year round, safely penned and guarded by three Great Pyrenees.
This wool is used exclusively for Eakins-branded Private Reserve, the highest quality rug collection handwoven in her Connecticut studio.
The living room’s pale perimeter is offset by bright Elizabeth Eakins pillows, an antique bergere upholstered with a Brigitte Singh tablecloth and an Eakins rug in melon.
A balance is struck between farmhouse ease and provenance with linen slipcovers on a down sofa, antique glass lamps from George Terbovich and a portrait of Jerry as a young boy.
The bedroom features a seamed custom rug, a handwoven throw by Elizabeth Eakins, Swedish antiques and 100 botanical engravings.
Relying on the farm’s plentiful limestone for its foundation, architect Robert Schultz designed the loom house in the prairie vernacular style. It houses a creative work space plus a bedroom, bathroom and sauna.
An old teak drawing table from Circa Antiques holds work-related materials while an antique wicker sofa with an array of Eakins indigo textiles offers a resting spot.
This is what natural looks like—“Diamond” and “Blossom” Private Reserve using pale gray fleece.
Eakins calls the loom house her think tank; recently dyed Private Reserve wool yarn awaits her experimentation.