Rug restoration in Brussels

We repair from the structure towards the surface

A hand-knotted rug rests on three things. The warp: the threads held taut lengthwise, from one end of the loom to the other. The weft: the threads passed across after each row of knots. Together they form the foundation. The pile — what the hand touches — is only the visible part of the knots tied onto that foundation.

The order of the repairs follows from this architecture. Re-knotting pile over a broken weft is like laying tiles on a floor that moves: the area will open up again. So we rebuild the warp and the weft first, we re-knot the pile next, and we touch the colour only last, once the relief has come back up to height.

Washing, for its part, comes before all the rest. Wool loaded with mineral dust does not take dye in the same way, and a colour retouched on a dirty rug comes out wrong at the first cleaning.

Three possible answers to a diagnosis

A damaged rug falls into one of three categories, and saying so straight is part of the work.

Repairable: the foundation is sound, the damage is local, the design remains legible around the area. That is the case for the great majority of moth-eaten rugs — the larva eats the wool and leaves the cotton of the warp.

Can wait: a fringe fraying without running, a selvedge going grey, even wear across the pile. These faults do not progress on their own as long as nothing pulls at them. We note them, we keep an eye on them, and we do not charge for work that is not urgent.

Beyond repair: pile worn down to the foundation over a large area, wool that has turned to powder under the fingers, a machine-made rug with a glued back. There, restoration costs more than it brings in, and we say so before the quote, not after.

What makes a quote vary

There is no square-metre rate in restoration. The price follows the number of knots to be redone, and that number depends on the knot density: a dense Bidjar and a long-pile Berber do not take the same time for a hole of the same size.

Also counting are the material — silk is re-knotted more slowly than wool —, the original knot, the number of colours to be matched and where the damage is: a border is taken up more quickly than a join in the open field.

One rule of the trade serves as a safeguard: when the cost of the restoration exceeds a third of the market value of the rug, the operation becomes questionable. Above that threshold, we propose either work reduced to making the rug safe, or buying the piece.

Send photographs — the whole rug, the back, and a close-up of each damaged area with an object for scale. A costed answer within 48 working hours.

Nine operations, one workshop

The pages that follow set out each operation: fringes, selvedges, holes and tears, reweaving, colour retouching, moth-eaten rugs, water damage, burns, antique rugs. On any one rug, two or three of these operations almost always follow on from each other.

We collect and deliver in central Brussels, in the periphery and Walloon Brabant, and in Antwerp and Liège. A rug never needs to be folded to travel: it is rolled, pile facing outwards.