Antique Rug Cleaning

Cleaning of precious collectible carpets is a process that should be carried out with responsibility and care.  Once in a possession of an antique rug, a collector (or investor) assumes the role of a true custodian of important artifact and part of the artistic heritage of great importance to future generations.  

Many valuable artefacts of weaving arts have been lost to neglect, pets and their owners.

Professional cleaning of antique rugs requires a skill and that skill inevitably comes with a price.

The antique rug that happened to be in your custody, ought to be cleaned at least once every year as the film of dust collected on the surface of the rug will affect its appearance.

Such annual cleaning can be carried out at home, though, and rather inexpensively to boot.

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Here is a very simple and effective way to do it:

1. Dusting

To get rid of the loose dirt and dust in your rug, turn the rug pile-downwards and vacuum the rug using a commercial vacuum cleaner. Make sure that the head of the vacuum cleaner has some weight; the process essentially consists of beating the dust out.

The process of ‘beating your rug’ is very important; dust left in the foundation will turn into mud when, in later stages, water and shampoo are applied.

• Turn the rug pile-upward and give it another gentle vacuum to extract any dust left in the wool fibres.

2. Washing

Before undertaking this step, look for ‘hot’ jarring colours on your rug.
Such colours ( candy red, for instance) are often synthetic and prone to ‘bleeding’. To ensure the stability of the dye, spit on white cotton cloth and rub it against the ‘suspicious’ area. Saliva is alkaline; it will react with the chemical dye and the cloth will be stained. If this is the case, you are better off sending your rug to a professional. If the cloth has no traces of colour smudging, you are safe to proceed to the next task.

• Fill a buspan with lukewarm water adding cooking salt, commercial vinegar and wool shampoo or detergent.  Mix thoroughly
• Using a soft brush, preferably a natural fibre one, clean the carpet moving the brush gently in circular motions against the direction of the pile.  Concentrate on small areas (a square foot at most) and dip the brush in the cleaning solution (lukewarm water, vinegar, cooking salt and shampoo) shaking off the excess of water before proceeding further.

You may have to prepare the cleaning solution more than once, if you see it is dirty, or you may simply run out of it if the rug is quite large.

Note that no rinsing is required; the foam will soak into the wool and dissolve completely and without a trace through the encounter with salt and vinegar.

3. Drying

• Once the washing of the carpet is complete. leave it on the sun if possible. Otherwise, if the cleaning is done indoors, use a fan or a heat fan instead.  Within a few hours in the sun, a bit longer indoors, your rug with shine with colours.
• The last step is to vacuum gently the rug combing the pile in the right direction (from the top to the bottom).  You will notice that all traces of soap residue are gone, and the carpet looks and smells new.

     As a responsible custodian of an antique rug, you should NOT wash your rug in a washing machine (you will ruin the foundation of the carpet beyond repair); dry-clean your rug (same effect); water soak your rug (this may cause bleeding of colours); use powered rotary-brush cleaners on your antique rug as they are deigned specifically for wall-to-wall machine-made carpets.

Good luck!

Food for thought: “When someone beats a rug with a stick, he is not beating the rug – his aim is to get rid of the dust … ‘ (-) Rumi

A.G.

Recommended books:
Caroline Bosly Rugs to Riches Unwin Hayman London 1987
Majid Amimi Oriental Rugs – Care and Repair Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, London 1981