Natural Home would like to give special thanks to Viva Terra for donating a huge quantity of beautiful, reclaimed and eco-friendly items to our Magazine Holiday Design Showcase. Natural Home has worked with Viva Terra and featured a number of the company’s fantastic home décor products before, so when we received the honor of participating in the State Department’s showcase, we knew immediately who to call.
A perfect blend of design elegance, classic style and conscientiousness, Viva Terra succeeds in perfectly combining the values most important to us here at Natural Home. Our belief is that an eco-friendly home is healthier and happier for the inhabitants and the planet–Viva Terra proves that it is also a more beautiful home aesthetically and ethically.
Some of the featured items included Oil Drum Angels, made by Haitian artisans out of empty oil drums that washed up on shore after World War II; Temple Bells made with 100 percent reclaimed brass-plated steel; the 100 percent organic, wild-harvested Festive Holiday Centerpiece made with cedar, achillea, flax and hydrangeas; gorgeous Birch Bark Trees; and Seeds of Joy wreaths made with eucalyptus, fir and salal, all certified organic and wild harvested. Natural Home decorated the Blair House’s customary 9-foot Christmas Tree, visible to passers-by on Pennsylvania Avenue, with hundreds of Viva Terra’s Quartz Crystal Ornaments and LED lights from Bulbrite.
Having featured Ten Thousand Villages and its products many times in our 10 years of publication, Natural Home has come to trust in and rely on the quality of Ten Thousand Villages products, and strongly believe in its mission of supporting artisans in nations around the world. The impeccable quality of its products and our shared vision of supporting fair trade artisans made Ten Thousand Villages a perfect fit to participate with Natural Home in the State Department’s Magazine Holiday Design Showcase and to provide decor for our diplomatic reception rooms, which host hundreds of guests including foreign leaders, diplomats, Senators, Congressmen and dignitaries. In addition to showcasing the beauty of sustainable local and handmade items, Natural Home felt compelled to show that, when chosen conscientiously, the products we Americans buy can support developing nations and impoverished communities around the world. The artistry of Ten Thousand Villages’ beautiful items also showed that supporting international artisans imparts our homes and other spaces with a beauty, worldliness and wonder not available through mass-produced home décor.
Eco-friendly hemp linen, product and fabric company Rawganique offered beautiful hemp table linens that are made in a healthy environment.
At the reception and throughout the holiday season, guests will be treated to fair trade, organic chocolate courtesy of SERRV International.
Guests received goodie bags, made of 100 percent recycled paper from Nashville Wraps, filled with treats, magazines and free subscriptions.
All glass featured in Natural Home‘s rooms was 100 percent recycled and available through Arhaus Furniture.
Live trees were purchased from Merrifield Garden Center in Merrifield, Virginia.