We wanted to write about a very special rug we have been working on for quite some time. This is a Turkish Ousak c.1900 with pure wool hand knotted pile, woolen warp and weft foundations and all natural dyes.
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In an earlier blog, we wrote about the full restoration of an Antique Persian rug called a Mahal, which was restored for the same client in West London. On collection of this carpet, we could see that it required extensive restoration – the piece was extremely worn and threadbare in many areas, the fringes had receded far into the field and the sides were warped and damaged.
The majority of the field needed placed back on a hand loom, carefully re-weaving extensive areas of the field – over four square metres in total required extensive strengthening. There were large areas of the map/field of the piece which were very weak (very light in colour and threadbare in the images) and required widespread strengthening and re-weaving.
We will re-weaved using exactly the same technique, knotting and wools that was originally used to produce the piece. We replicated the exact knot specification and the exact design to produce a repair invisible to the eye across the entire carpet.
Both fringed ends had been extensively worn down. We re-weaved the ends of the carpet by extending the wool foundations and building looms on each end to re-weave the worn sections to arrive at level ends and build out the large dips which have worn over time.Oriental rug cleaning (16)
We re-built this on hand looms to re-create and re-weave the lost design and produce even, straight and full piled ends, with short neat fringes. We re-corded each side using a looping stitch and level and secure each with a traditional stopping stitched individually wrapped around each of the cotton foundations which extend to create a fringe.
The finished product was remarkable. A beautiful Antique oriental rug fully restored in exactly the way it would have originally have been knotted.
We delivered the piece back to Mr and Mrs M’s house and took a few photographs in natural daylight (which hides nothing!) to show our clients just how special this piece is and that The Oriental Rug Repair Company is unrivalled in the restoration of fine antiques like this one.