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Rug Damage: Fringe and tassel repair
A rug is like a fabric waiting to unravel and the rug ends are the brakes. The rug will maintain its integrity as long as the ends are intact, but if otherwise, the rug will unravel before you know it. The ends and edges of oriental rugs act as a frame that the picture is sitting within; if the ends and edges are weak and not secure the picture can very easily fall out.
The foundation of a rug is the frame in which the rug is woven into. It is a grid of lines which creates the rectangular shape of the rug as well as determining the structural integrity of a rug. If you were to identify the grid of warp and wefts in a rug as the foundation and then imagine a sheet of graph paper; you can draw whatever you like, however you like so long as they go over the existing lines. In a similar way, the size the grid of lines that is the foundation of the rug determine how fine and how strong a rug might be. There are multiple designs for looms in different parts of the globe that allow for different types of knots and therefore different types of rugs to be woven. Regardless of the type of loom, the weaving process always stays the same.
The purpose of mounting a damaged rug on the loom is to set the foundation under consistent and symmetrical tension as restoration is carried out. The frame/loom allows for the rug to stay completely flat so that the weavers can work on both sides of the rug. It is imperative that the tension is kept the same throughout all parts of the frame or else the result will be a rug that is not completely flat with wrinkles and puckers. A lot of our work involves reconstructing rugs that have been subject to bad repairs from self-proclaimed professionals that only make the problem worse than it originally was, so it is always best to take your rug to a specialist as they can provide you the correct advice before moving ahead with the repairs.
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