We were asked by our client in South West London to restore a collection of handmade oriental carpets and rugs. We collected them at a time that was convenient for the client and brought them back to our workshop.
Once the collection was back at our workshop, we quickly realised that the oriental carpets and rugs needed extensive restoration – not only the fringes, but the corded sides, threadbare areas on most of the rugs and a series of rips, tears and damaged areas.
The main image above is of the fringed end of one of the Persian rugs and as you can see it was in serious need of repair and restoration.
There’s a few options to repair the fringes on a rug likes this. The client opted for restoration of the complete end and as you can see from the completed image we have fully restored the end. However, the options that we put forth to the client for this was as follows:
– Complete restoration – rebuilding all the worn areas and re-weaving the knotted woolen handmade pile.
– Level and securing of the fringe – we take the lowest point of wear at the fringe and level at that point all the way across. We make a short neat even fringe using the existing foundation of the rug (the warp and weft).
– To simply secure the end – we re-insert the original stopping stitch across the fringed end, leaving the uneven end to exist but become secure to stop any further wools from coming off.
We carefully hand wash every rug after we have restored or repaired as the new wools colours blend together and give the rug a more complete and uniform appearance.
After cleaning and repair of all the oriental rugs, we returned them to the client whom was completely thrilled by the outcome. So much so that he kindly gave us four further rugs to restore.