One of our regular clients who lives in the New Town in Edinburgh is a collector of very fine and rare antique oriental carpets and has us clean and moth treat them regularly before laying them in his townhouse. He recently acquired an antique Persian Mahal carpet some months ago which was in need of serious and extensive repairing of some large tears, threadbare areas, fringes damaged and needed professional hand cleaning. We collected the carpet from his Edinburgh address and brought it back to the workshop for closer inspection.
This sort of restoration is typical of most antique rugs which come in to our Edinburgh workshop, namely; fringes needing repaired, sides or chords rebuilt, holes in the field caused by wear and tear and heavy furniture and several tears that will need attention. It is not unusual for us to completely restore such an item – rebuilding large areas on a hand loom and weaving new wools into the foundations to strengthen the carpet.
After hand washing and drying, the true colours of the rug can then be matched with organically dyed wools. We had to re-weave the foundation in certain areas, which meant creating a small hand loom and re-building the cotton warp and weft foundations – ready for the new knots to be woven exactly as they would have originally been woven.
The result will be, a rug that is once again usable and not fragile, with the colour restored and invisible repairs. It was a lengthy process to repair but entirely worthwhile. The piece is very rare and in its newly restored condition extremely valuable.
We are proud to maintain these works of art that are becoming more scarce. Thanks again Mr M for your custom – we thoroughly enjoyed bringing this beautiful antique Persian carpet back to life.