Caring for your handmade carpets & kilims

Padding

The purpose of a padding — or underlay — is to protect the rug from being squeezed between two hard surfaces. Over time, uneven pressure can affect the fibres. Before vacuum cleaners, carpets were beaten with a stick to remove dust and dirt, which often left them unevenly beaten and, in time, affected the squareness of the rug.

You can place a handmade carpet over marble, parquet, or tile flooring, or even over a wall-to-wall machine-made carpet — as long as the surface underneath doesn't have a thick pile that causes the handmade carpet to "walk" with you. In that case, either a low-cut wall-to-wall carpet or an underlay made from a combination of animal hair and jute, coated with rubber on both sides, would be ideal.

Cleaning

Cleaning should be undertaken regularly and slowly — unless your carpet is very old or in a poor state of repair, in which case a specialist cleaner should be consulted. Over the years we've met several unhappy customers who complained about poor-quality work by some professional cleaners, so we always advise choosing a reputable specialist who will provide expert service. If you want to enjoy your oriental carpet in your lifetime and hand it down to future generations, you must care for it well and educate your family members on how to maintain it.

Cleaning an oriental carpet should start from the reverse side — not the pile side — with a carpet sweeper or vacuum cleaner, which will cause grit to fall out of the pile. This is where the value of a good-quality handmade carpet becomes clear: the finer the knot count, the clearer and higher-resolution the reverse side, so you can even display the back of your rug when needed. During a lively party with high heels and drinks being served, no one will notice the back of your carpet — as long as you keep it your little secret.

Vacuum cleaners with very violent beaters should be avoided, as they can damage the foundation, and you should never let them suck up the fringe. Traditionally, carpets were washed by villagers at the basin of a fountain or along riverbanks, then laid out in the sun until completely dry. Nomadic people living at higher altitudes still use snow as a cleaning agent. You can use a sponge, detergent-free Ivory soap, and lukewarm water for a fairly good basic cleaning — though today's technology has produced other effective methods as well.

Shampooing

Modern carpet shampoos will not only remove grit and dirt but also return a degree of essential moisture to the fabric. If a rug becomes too dry — which can happen in centrally-heated or air-conditioned rooms — the fibres of the pile can become brittle and begin to wear out. By the same token, if a rug is allowed to stay damp over a period of time, mildew may form and cause permanent damage to the foundation.

Shampooing an expensive, old, or delicate rug is best left to a specialist company rather than a general cleaner, since the techniques and chemicals used on synthetic wall-to-wall carpets may not be suitable for the vegetable dyes used in many handmade Turkish carpets. And finally: using a hair dryer on a wet handmade carpet is not recommended. Some shampoo brands dry within half an hour even in a dark room, which spares you the hard work of hauling larger rugs out to the nearest garden to dry in the sun.

We have carpet farms in Southern Turkey where these rugs are sun-tested during the summer. Without this sun-test procedure, it would be very difficult — even for carpet experts — to look at a finished carpet before it's washed and dried and know that the dyes were properly prepared.

Stain Removal

Here are a few basic stain-removal tips. For anything beyond these, it's always best to have stains removed by a true professional.

As a simple reminder: always scrub a stained area gently, never with force. Cleaning the rest of the carpet at the same time will give you a more even, overall clean look. If you'd like advice on other kinds of stains, feel free to email us — we're always happy to help.

Long-Term Maintenance

Keeping your oriental carpet as clean as possible is the first step in maintaining its value — but for a handmade rug, it's only the beginning. A little extra knowledge ensures that the beautiful carpet you've invested in will please you, and all the family members who inherit it, for years to come.

Most people buy a house and decorate it to their taste — but how many realize that a handmade Turkish carpet will outlast everything and everyone in that house? It's the very reason some real estate agents stage empty homes with a few oriental carpets, and have decorators suggest that the future owner design around them. Just as a mint-condition car must be well maintained and a vintage wine properly stored, a handmade carpet must be cared for gently to become a true collectible asset — enjoyed across generations and, in time, an antique with tremendous resale value.

Visit museums around the world where old carpets are on display and you can see the effect of the centuries on them. One such wonderful place is the İbrahim Paşa Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul, where eighteen pieces of Selçuk-period handmade carpets are on exhibit. They were discovered by the German ambassador who visited the Mosque of Alâeddin in Konya — ancient Iconium in the Bible — in 1905, who recognized them as the mosque's original carpets, dating back to 1221. Had he not done so, we might not have those carpets today. Some survive in fragments, others almost complete, showing the tremendous importance of correct maintenance.

These are among the oldest carpets around — as is the famous Pazyryk carpet, discovered by the Russian archaeologist Rudenko in 1949 in the Ural mountain range, where old nomadic Turkish tribes once lived. Found in an iced burial tomb, it is the oldest surviving carpet in the world, some twenty-five hundred years old. And next time you're in Istanbul, if you haven't already seen it, visit the Yıldız Palace Şale Kiosk, home to the largest wool-on-cotton Hereke carpet — 406 square metres, roughly 4,368 square feet.

So we know that, with proper care, these rugs can last a very long time. It's worth noting that this is becoming a dying art form: in our globalised world, the labour force has grown more sophisticated, and it's increasingly hard to interest young weavers in this traditional craft when other jobs pay better and demand less. Over the last forty years we've seen a decline in production, and some types have already become extinct — like the original Kars carpet — a fate shared by genuine Navajo carpets, which have a rich history intertwined with some of our Turkish carpets.

Recommended maintenance precautions