Welcome

It has been a long while since I wrote the last newsletter but I had a month off in Cape Town, a beautiful city, and since then I have been very busy with some great projects. These have covered traditional, contemporary, old and new, the full spectrum. I loved the variety of clients, homes and rugs.

Case Studies

Garden based rugs

Clara, who lives off the Kings Road in a Georgian house, gave me a brief for two garden panelled carpets that would compliment each other. Colours could be red, orange or beige. The styles she had found on a website were not available in the UK. I proposed some rugs that were a variation on the same theme and better quality. From a short-list Clara chose two rugs that had hand-spun wool pile, natural dyes and of excellent workmanship suiting well the furnishings in the room. The photos on the right do not do them justice.

Geometric designs

Jacky and Gareth in Blackheath wanted a rug for their lounge to go with a dark brown sofa, a red sofa and red cushions with geometric designs. Many Oriental rugs have a red background and would not have gone well in the room even if the right red could have been found. It took some searching but I found a selection that had a little of right red, the right size, geometric and within budget. They chose from the shortlist this Persian Moud which unusually for a rug is exactly square (2mx2m).

Tips

Vacuuming your rugs

Always set the suction at a low setting and vacuum in the direction of the pile. For those rugs with fringes be very careful not to vacuum the fringe as it will in time damage the rug which can lead to costly repairs.

Rugs under plant pots

Do avoid placing plant pots on your rugs. The problem is that the moisture from the pot will seep into the rug so it will slowly rot the rug. This is even if you have taken every care that the pot does not leak. Repairing it can be very costly.

Rugs under furniture

No damage will occur under most furniture as long as the furniture is moved every few months so that the pile can spring back. However, I don't recommend placing rugs under very heavy furniture.

Glossary - I

In each newsletter I cover a letter of the alphabet - here the letter 'I' - with a selection of rugs and technical information.

Islamic Calligraphy

A workshop rug of a well known weaver may have some calligraphy, often showing their signature. This one, a very fine Kashan carpet, reads "Kashan Attarha brothers".

Isfahan

A city of western central Iran known for carpets produced by a specialist team. Artists would create the design and cartoon, dyers match the colours, weavers would work from the detailed cartoons, creating curvilinear rugs and carpets. As a workshop carpet it is characterized by a balanced overall design, soft curves, faultless technique and no one colour dominating.

Indigo

Indigo, the original dye of “Levi’s” blue jeans is also used in dyes in Oriental rugs. In the dyeing process the blue begins to appear when the wool is exposed to oxygen. The photo is from a trip I made to Turkey where the women run a cooperative of rug weavers producing DOBAG rugs.

Indigo is not chemically attached to the wool and protects the wool. In older rugs the blue pile will not be as worn as other areas. Where indigo is mixed with natural yellow dyes to produce green in time the colour may become blue-green depending on how well the yellow is light- fast.

Islamic dates

A date may be woven into rugs using Arabic calligraphy. In Iran, Pakistan and India they use “east arab numerals” for their Arab writing. The numbers are written from right to left with the highest value furthest left.

The Islamic date is converted into a Christian/Gregorian date using the formula:

Gregorian date= Islamic date + 622 – (Islamic date/33.7)

Occasionally rugs have been copied from the back including the date which results in the date appearing as a mirror image.