Over 380 rugs of different sizes and patterns filled the crowded conference center at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Coralville.

This month, from Oct. 11-15, The Ten Thousand Villages Rug Event made its seventh annual appearance.

Ten Thousand Villages is one of the oldest fair-trade companies in the world. Founded in 1946 with its Iowa City Branch opening in 2016, the company has had a vast amount of experience with nonprofit events and organizations.

The event works in collaboration with Bunyaad Rugs, another fair-trade program that provides families from Pakistan the opportunity to sell their hand-made knotted rugs by distributing them through vendors across the country.

Yousaf Chaman, the executive director of Bunyaad, spoke about the variety of rugs that filled the conference center throughout the week and the sentiments that accompany them.

“This is some people’s calling,” Chaman said. “We want them to be who they want to be and that makes them want to create beautiful art. People should always have the choice.”

According to Chaman, the designs are entirely unique to the respective Pakistani villages where the rugs were made and differ depending on each individual family making them. Bunyaad hosts rugs from over 850 families across over 100 villages.

“Each family has a loom in their home, so they can choose color, style, design … and it’s been passed down through generations,” Chaman said. “These are all natural dyes, all of these colors are completely natural, so we’re really going back to basics.”

In the conference center, a display of the raw materials used to create the rugs was displayed to inform customers about the natural process of this craft.

Executive Director of Ten Thousand Villages, Liz Preciado Genell, said fair trade preserves the cultural craft of the area the products come from. Genell said selling the rugs in Iowa City is a unique experience because of its demographics.

“Because the University of Iowa is such an international place, people will come in and have a personal attachment to an item or be much more familiar with it,” Genell said.