old oriental rug repair

[Stevea]

I had these photos shared with me from a cleaner that learned repair work and I thought I should share them with all here. I will let his words explain the repair he did and what I thought was good was his enthusiasm and his willingness to work on it and make it happen. I hope all enjoy. I tried to enlarge the photos to be able to see them better so they have lost a little clarity but they were pretty small to see otherwise.

Steve,

It's been a while. But have I got a story for you. I attatched some pictures of the repair. One of our customers has This original Karistan Oriental rug past down from generations. She said is is over 150 years old. She put a plant on it and forgot to put the protective plate under it. Over time as she watered it the water, of course, ran through. She finally noticed it and moved the plant. Then she moved the rug and it fell apart, crumbled. She screamed HELP. Confident in her eyes but nervous in mine I attempted to repair the rug. The pictures should explain the rest. The final repair picture hides the repair pretty good. Let me know if you can find it. I thought you could use these in the future. Not meaning to be big headed about it, but I am proud of this one!!!

here are the photos he sent with this repair

Great job and great example.

SA

 

[Charlie Lyman]

can you post the photos that aren't enlarged too? those photos are pretty distorted and it's hard to tell what's going on. Having them both to look at would be good.
Thanks.

 

[Stevea]

Charles,

I will try to. I will have to find them, I am not sure I saved the smaller ones but I can probably pull them back up.

SA

 

[The Great Oz]

I don't understand the repair. Was there a section of another rug sewn in or did he glue the fragments back together?

The "dry rot" fungus attacks only plant fiber, in this case the cotton foundation, but will leave the wool face fiber unharmed. In the case of a machine made rug with dry rot, the simplest repair is to coat the back of the rug in the affected area with latex and adhere a layer of backing material to secure it. If the blue fabric is glued to the rug, great. Not gluing a backing material to the rug will mean a good looking but weaker repair.

If this were a real hand-knotted Oriental that had little value doing the kind same kind of repair might be appropriate, but reweaving or insewing foundation fiber would be the right repair if the rug was valuable.

Also, this Karastan might be as much as 80 years old, but 150 is unlikely. It's a machine woven copy of the painted Sarouk that was popular in the 1920s, and has been a staple of Karastan's ever since. Pretty common for people to think that if their grandparent died 25 years ago at the age of 90, everything they owned is 115 years old - as if they purchased all of their furnishings when they were born.

 

[Stevea]

It is a simple matter of a newer student that attempted and completed a repair he was proud of and wanted to share it with me. I simply wanted to share it with others here in the hope that some newer or possible a little timid might see something someone else did and maybe somewhere down the line that might help them to perform a repair.

I do not know what he did, I only encouraged him and tried to make him feel appreciated for the work and that he did the repair.

SA

 

[rhyde]

What an unfortunate post…. The pics are so out of focus I can tell next to nothing about the work/ workmanship ?

Karastan has only been around since the late 1920’s Actually, I can be more specific if you like the first rug rolled off the loom at 2:02 p.m., April 8, 1928. No karastan area rug existed before specific point in time.