Burns, scorching and ember holes

Two kinds of damage under one word

The first is called a scorch mark: an iron left down a second too long, an ember fallen from the fireplace, a spark from a barbecue, a cigarette. Wool burns badly — it scorches more than it catches fire — the tip of the pile blackens, hardens, and the smell stays. Under the burnt part, the foundation is intact.

The second is a hole right through. The heat has been strong enough or long enough to destroy the pile, the weft and the warp. The rug is perforated: it is a hole, and it is treated as a hole.

The sorting is done from the back, in a second. If the back is sound under the mark, it is scorching. If it is blackened or pierced, it is a hole. Everything that follows — and the quote — depends on that single observation.

The scorch mark: clear it, then repile

A burn is not bleached and it is not rubbed: the charred fibre is brittle, and rubbing only drives it in and spreads the black into the neighbouring pile. It is cleared away. With the point of the scissors, strand by strand, the charred part is removed until sound wool is reached over the whole remaining height.

On a very superficial burn, that clearing is enough: the pile regains its colour, with a slight hollow that fills in over a few weeks of use. As soon as the hollow shows, we repile, refilling with hand-dyed wool, to the height of the neighbouring pile, respecting the lie of the pile.

Then there is the halo. Around a burn, the heat yellows the wool over a few millimetres without charring it. That yellow goes in the wash, not in the clearing: which is why we wash after clearing, never the other way round.

The hole right through: reweave, then re-knot

When the foundation has gone, there is nothing left to knot on. So the warp threads are set up again across the area, the wefts are passed back between them, and a foundation is reconstituted at the density of the rug. The re-knotting comes next, with the original knot, following the design read off around the hole.

The edges of a burn hole have a peculiarity: the wool there is stiffened over one or two millimetres, without being frankly black. That hardened crown has to be removed before reweaving, otherwise the join stays brittle and opens again at the first wash.

An ember hole rarely has a clean shape. The edges run at a bevel, wider at the surface than at the back, because heat rises. The reweaving therefore follows that shape, and not a square drawn around the damage: as little sound material as possible is removed.

The repairs that came before

We regularly see burns treated with glue, or plugged with a piece of rug cut from elsewhere and glued underneath. Both are spotted immediately by touch: the area is stiff, the back is flat, and the pile does not lie in the same direction as the pile around it.

Putting it right then means removing the glued work, cleaning off the residue fibre by fibre, and redoing the job properly. It takes longer than a fresh burn, and it is the reason why it is better not to attempt anything yourself.