Kilim cleaning

With no pile, the dirt sits in the structure

In a knotted rug, dust works its way down to the base of the pile and settles there out of reach. A kilim has no depth of pile: the dust is caught in the weave itself, between warp and weft, and it passes right through. That is why a kilim that looks light often gives up far more dust than expected.

Mechanical dusting is therefore done on both faces, one after the other. There is no back to be neglected: both sides are fronts, and both have seen the same dust.

The vertical slits are not tears

Where two blocks of colour meet along a vertical line, each weft turns back on its own side without crossing the other. A slit is left between them. It is the signature of flatweaving, not a fault, and it is what gives the kilim its very sharp outlines.

It is also its weak point. A pull, a twist, harsh spinning or drying under uneven tension lengthen those slits millimetre by millimetre. In the workshop a kilim is handled flat, never wrung out to shed water, and spun with restraint. The slits are recorded before the bath and checked again afterwards: any that have opened are closed with a needle, at the original point, before the rug goes back.

Why a kilim ripples

A knotted rug has a pile that absorbs small differences in tension. A kilim has none: the tension of the warp and of the weft reads directly at the surface. The slightest irregularity shows.

There is also a difference of material. The warp is often cotton and the wefts wool, and the two do not react to water in the same way: wool swells and shrinks back more as it dries. If a kilim dries hanging, laid on an uneven surface, or pulled from one side only, that difference sets into permanent waves.

Hence the rule: drying strictly flat, on a perfectly rigid surface, in a ventilated atmosphere, with gentle, symmetrical re-tensioning while the piece is still damp. A kilim that has already rippled can sometimes be brought back by a fresh wash followed by drying under controlled tension — sometimes only, and we say so beforehand, not afterwards.

Dye bleed shows on both sides

On a knotted rug, colour migration can reach the back without being noticed. On a kilim there is no hidden face: a red that has run onto an ivory reads from both sides, and there is nowhere to put it.

The colour-fastness test is therefore more than a precaution here. Old Anatolian and Caucasian kilims are dyed with madder and indigo; more recent pieces use synthetic dyes, which appeared around 1880, and it is these that bleed most. A damp white cotton cloth, a discreet area, ten to thirty minutes under light pressure — up to an hour on an old piece. If the cloth talks, the colours are fixed before the bath and the wash is colder still.

The wash, and what wears a kilim day to day

The bath is done with neutral soap, below 30 °C, by hand, with no hard brush — a flatweave has no pile to lay back down, it has a surface that must not be pilled. Rinsing until the water runs clear and neutral, measured spinning, flat drying in under twenty-four hours.

Day to day, a kilim wears mainly through three things. Being walked on always in the same place, which is corrected by turning the piece over: it is reversible, and that is so much life gained. The cheap foam underlay, which ends up breaking down and sticking to the weave. And hanging on a wall from nails or clips, which concentrates the whole weight on a few centimetres of weft — a hanging is suspended from a strip sewn across its full width, never from points.