Chilewich
Woven vinyl placemats, runners and floor mats designed in New York and woven at the company own mill in Georgia.
🇺🇸 Made in USA
Our assessment
Company details
Where Chilewich products are made
This is not a brand that places orders with a contract weaver. Chilewich names its own production facility in Chatsworth, Georgia, states that its woven textiles are made entirely in the United States, and says on its sustainability page that it ensures “our own factory in Georgia meets or exceeds EPA and OSHA standards.” Ownership is what makes the claim durable.
Roughly forty thousand placemats a week is a specific, checkable, falsifiable figure. Most origin copy avoids numbers precisely because numbers invite scrutiny. Chilewich puts one on its Our Story page next to the name of the town.
Products are designed at the New York City studio and woven in Georgia. The company describes both steps and does not blur them into a single vague sentence about American craftsmanship, which makes it possible to see exactly which part of the work happens where.
The Federal Trade Commission reserves an unqualified Made in USA claim for goods that are all or virtually all of domestic origin. The Chilewich claim is scoped by the company itself to its woven textiles, which is what the Buy American Campaign store stocks. Chilewich also distributes the Japanese brand Hachiman in North America; those products are not Chilewich-made and carry no American origin claim.
The story
Chilewich began in 2000 when designer Sandy Chilewich encountered the industrial process of extruding yarns and saw something nobody had seen in it: that vinyl yarn could be woven into a placemat. The company says the result changed how the world sets the table, and that is not an unreasonable claim for a product now found on restaurant tables on six continents.
The weaving happens in Chatsworth, Georgia, in a plant Chilewich owns and runs. The design happens at a New York City studio, where a team of master weavers and designers under VP of Design and Creative Kristin Harris renews the collections seasonally. The company has grown into five divisions covering retail, architecture and design, wholesale, interior design and hospitality, led by John McPhee, and sells in a hundred and ten countries.
The materials are engineered as much as designed. Chilewich textiles are built for longevity and low volatile organic compound performance, and the company says they are certified for use in demanding settings including major hospitals. The everyday version of that engineering is simpler: a placemat you wipe down rather than launder, and that survives years of it.
Why they matter
American textile manufacturing has been contracting for half a century, and woven goods are near the centre of that story. Chilewich went the other way. It built a domestic weaving operation from scratch in 2000, owns it, and has kept the design studio and the mill in the same country.
What makes Chilewich unusually easy to verify is the specificity. The town is named. The factory is described as the company own. The weekly output is published. The environmental standards the plant is held to are named. Each of those is something a journalist, a buyer or a competitor could check, which is the point of publishing them.
Chilewich also draws its own line honestly. Its American claim covers the woven textiles. When it brings in a Japanese brand for North American distribution, it says so on a dedicated page rather than letting the halo spread. That distinction is exactly the one the Buy American Campaign asks companies to make.
Shop Chilewich products
The Buy American Campaign store stocks sixteen Chilewich items, all of them woven textiles: mini basketweave round placemats and coasters, pressed Bloom coasters, table runners, and pieces from the Martha Stewart x Chilewich collection including Scroll, Lemon Leaves, Ribbons and Damask. Every one of them comes from the Chatsworth mill.
Chilewich questions
Where are Chilewich placemats made?
At the Chilewich production facility in Chatsworth, Georgia. The company states that its woven textiles are made entirely in the United States and that the plant manufactures approximately forty thousand placemats a week.
Is everything Chilewich sells made in the United States?
The American claim covers the Chilewich woven textiles. Chilewich also distributes Hachiman, a Japanese brand of buckets and accessories, in North America. Those are not Chilewich-manufactured and are not covered by the claim.
How do you clean a Chilewich placemat?
They are designed to be wiped rather than laundered. The textiles are engineered for longevity and low volatile organic compound performance, and Chilewich says they are certified for demanding settings including major hospitals.
Who founded Chilewich and when?
Designer Sandy Chilewich. The company sustainability page states that Chilewich was born in 2000, out of her passion for reimagining everyday objects, after she encountered the process of extruding yarns.