Carpet Cleaning
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Shrub & Tree Carpets
A close relation of to both animal and medallion carpets, tree or shrub carpets were woven from the 16th century onwards. One particular group of these are directly related (structurally) to vase carpets, early eighteenth century rugs from Kurdistan, they resemble Kuba dragon rugs from Caucsus.
The best known tree carpet is the ‘Williams’ from Philadelphia, which is woven on a red ground, with flowering cypresses branches, flowering shrubs and trees forming a striking floral pattern. In the Metropolitan museum in New York, there is a more unusual tree carpet, this adaptation of the medallion design shows a pool with fish with trees and flowers, the design is non directional.
Fine examples of shrub/tree rugs fetch large sums of money, with rugs such as the Lady Dudley carpet, dating back to the 16th century, selling at Sotherby’s in the Spring of 1976, keen bidding from collectors from all over the world produced a fierce contest for the prized original.
It is reasonable to ascribe most of these carpets, whether from 16th, 17th or 18th centuries to Persia (North West) styles of drawing are very consistent over the three hundred years. Field designs, which are often dark blue with rows of medallions, these are usually light tan and blue-green for larger rugs and white-red for smaller pieces. An extremely fine example with a white ground floral border was purchased at Christie’s in 1976 by a private collector.
Collectors and museum’s compete for the rarest pieces, the opportunity to view these rugs has reduced, with only selected places to visit. Some of the mentioned private collections belong to various Royal or prominent families around the world, an example would be a pair of carpets once in the possession of Pince Doria, now on display in the Metropolitan Museum, also on display at the Metropolitan is a silk Kelim once belonging to the Royal House of Saxony, on close examination, the fine detail and intricate weaving is incredible, especially when you consider the basic tools and knowledge and materials available four centuries ago.
Carpet and Upholstery cleaning - Our solutions.
Safe and consistent carpet and upholstery cleaning solutions, some information on a solution we use for cleaning-
M-Power® Carpet and Upholstery Cleaner, is:- Derived from renewable/sustainable sources
- Fully Biodegradable
- Exhibits anti-bacterial & anti-viral properties thanks to its unique natural-molecular cleaning action.
- Non-toxic to humans and pets
- Non-toxic to aquatic life
- Non-reactive with chemicals, such as chlorine bleach
- Non-caustic
- Non-combustible
- Non-corrosive
- Non-flammable
- Non-fuming,
- Non-hazardous
- Non-polluting
M-Power® Carpet and Upholstery Cleaner contains:- NO ammonia
- NO animal products
- NO Bacteria or Enzymes
- NO artificial ingredients
- NO isopropyl alcohol
- NO phosphates
- NO solvents (apart from water)
- NO synthetic chemicals
- NO harmful ingredients
- NO Soap or detergents
This product works particularly well when cleaning natural fibre carpets or upholstery, a good dwell time is recommended, we usually let the product work for twenty minutes.
Payment before service?
After cleaning carpets and upholstery for many years we have seen many questionable practices, we recently have visited a website offering carpet cleaning services in this area, when clicking on the ‘get quote’ button I was asked to make sure my credit card was to hand! Stop! We believe this is the correct procedure to follow:
A customer calls or makes an e mail enquiry -
We respond with by offering to visit and conduct a survey, or by sending an e mail costing (this is free of charge)
If the quotation is acceptable -
We will call in, phone or e mail suggesting some times that may be suitable to our customers. (again free of charge)
On the day we arrive, we will execute our three stage cleaning process and only then, will we present our invoice, we expect no pre-payments or deposits, we are confident that you will be pleased with our standards of work.
We are NCCA (National Carpet Cleaners Association) members and follow a strict code of conduct, giving our customers peace of mind.
UV Damage - Carpets and Rugs
Every week we see serious Ultra Violet or sun bleaching damage to carpets, soft furnishings, rugs, textiles and leather furniture. As people tend to move items of furniture and rugs infrequently, dramatic colour change is seen, very regularly.
But what can you do?
On hot summer days, closing blinds or curtains can help protect your personal items, particularly between 12-3.30 pm, leather furniture dries, carpets and rugs fade, pictures also fade, a consequence can be, brittle carpet and rug fibres, cracked or split leather, damaged soft furnishing fibres can lead to balding. One clever solution is employing a company to fix apply a virtually invisible filter to the inside panes of glass, after rigorous cleaning, these UV filters screen out most of the harmful rays damaging your possessions.
Even in winter months, gradual damage still occurs. As we protect our skin with sun screen, this will be a bigger consideration as the problem of global warming increases as the years roll by.
Bed bugs in Brighton? How to deal with them.
Bed bugs are tiny wingless insects, they feed on the blood of warm blooded animals and humans. These little bloodsuckers and their relatives have evolved as nest parasites. Some live in bird nests or even bat roosts, waiting for the unsuspecting animal to return home. Infant bugs are about the size of a poppy seed, growing up to 10mm in length as adults, they have a fairly flat body with an oval shape, colours range from white to dark brown, if you look closely after the bug has been feeding, you can actually see the victims blood in the insects body.
Bed bug activity - When we are sleeping, they become active, looking for people or animals. They will sip our blood without us realising, whilst they are doing this, small amounts of the bugs saliva will be injected into our skin. Over a period of several weeks exposure to bed bugs, we can become sensitized to the saliva, sometimes leading to allergic responses. The marks on our skin resemble those left behind by fleas and mosquitoes.
Where do they come from? Bed bugs hide in small cracks and crevices, they can be found in furniture, pillows, boxes, luggage. Purchasing used furniture or mattresses can prove an excellent way of these creatures gaining entry into your home. Bed bugs can survive for several weeks without feeding, they can also travel between walls and regularly move from house to house in search of new food sources.
Looking for bed bugs Inspect your furniture or mattress closely, used skins and tiny blood spots can be an indication of infestation at some stage in the furniture’s life. Don’t forget that bed bug larvae can be the same size as a grain of rice.
Our safe and non toxic solutions can eliminate bed bugs, please feel free to contact us for a non obligatory treatment cost.
Rug hooking - Do’s and Dont’s
Do make sure your linen, monk cloth or burlap is taut in a your frame, avoid leaving your pattern in
a hoop for long periods of time when you are not working on it.
Exaggerate your loops every even stitch, pulling them up two centimetres or so, then with with your hand under your hoop or frame, pull the loop down to the same height of previous hoops.
Hook inside lines on a pattern, never on the line.
When beggining your project, put a ‘holding line’ around the inside of your border, this ensures the lines of
the border are straight when you get to them.
When starting hooking, begin at the centre of your pattern, working gradually outwards, put lines around the designs and patterns and then fill them in.
It is acceptable to use more than one size cut on one pattern, although when you do, ensure your loops are the same height.
When considering rug balance, use both dull and bright colours in carpet pattern.
If you are worried that you won’t have enough wool of one colour, hook several strips with it, avoid trimming your tails. By doing this, you will see exactly how far your wool will go, its worth considering dying should you run out of wool during construction, if you notice a difference in hues, pull out random strands of colour throughout the rug surface, re-hook using your new colour.
Save all of your scraps as you are working, you may need them later. Fill a plastic bag with swatches of all of the wool and label it, you may need to use them for rug repairs in the future.
When cleaning your rug, resist the temptation to use your vacuum cleaner, sweep it, underside first and then the facing side.
Dust mites……sleepless nights.
We do have an allergy section on our main website with lots of useful information, although we came across this link that was an clip from the BBC ‘one show’, if you have someone that suffers from Asthma or perhaps a person in you home that is showing signs of Asthma, taking time to look at this clip may be five minutes well spent! Click on the link below.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theoneshow/consumer/2008/09/24/sleep-watch-do-you-have-dustmi.html
This is a very similar sytem to our Dust Mite treatments.
Kashan Silk Carpets
Once in the Hapsburg royal collection of carpets, the Vienna hunting carpet can be catagorised as a madallion and corner type of carpet, with an eight-lobed cartouche, green in coulour, it ten feet six inches wide by twenty two feet four inches long and has knot count of around 785 to the square inch, with silver-gilt and silver brocading. Depicting a field that is woven with several small groups of huntsmen, some on foot and some are mounted, with horses shown in white, chestnut, grey and black. This scene shows them pursuing game, including hares, wolves, leopards and gazzelle, with some of the huntsmen actually killing their prey using bows, swords and spears.
This rug also shows two guards with an interseting brilliant white section of the carpet between them that represents Paradise, with winged beings being served by houris, this can be read in the Koran. With deep crimson representing the ground, this could suggest what the orignal field colour would have been like, before fading into the sammon pink ground seen today.
Vienna carpets are designed with beauty in mind, but also with striking draughtsmanship, only the very wealthy would have been able to afford such pieces of art, with regular and meticulous cleaning taking place on a weekly basis, this would have been overseen by a senior servant.
Small Kashin Silk Carpets
These rugs are much more numerous, there are around fourteen examples known, mostly carpets of Kashan, many scholars including Erdmann have spent years studying these carpets, their findings are widely respected. There are two groups, those without medallions (usually with animals and with all over patterns) and those with a central medallion, examples of these can be found at the following locations:
Bavarian National Museum, Munich, holding one Medallion rug.
Art Institute, Detroit, holding one animal.
Metropolitan Museum, New York, three Medallion and one animal.
Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, one Medallion
Louvre, Paris, one animal.
Textile museum, Washington, one Medallion.
Musee des Gobelins, Paris, one Medallion.
Ex-Aynard Collection, Paris, one animal.
Coimbra Museum, Portugal, one Medallion.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, one Medallion.
It is well worth finding the time to visit any of these places to see the splendid early
design and striking images shown on these rugs.
Persian Weaving - The Early Years
The Sassanian dynasty fell leaving the new establishment of the Caliphate at the helm, at this point the evidence for weaving in Persia becomes clearer, Arab historians and geogrophers focused on examining and codifying the people of Islam more seriously; this is an exiting benchmark, giving us a concise and accurate source of written detail. It is known that carpet weaving was in progress in Majanderan, Gilan and Fars in the south-west. Arab historians don’t elaborate on the type of weaving at the time, it is safe to asume that many pile carpets were made, these were almost exclusively made by tribal nomads, who probably would have moved down from the North.Following the conquest of Persia in 1037, much of the land became home for Turkish people, introducing new culture and language, they colonized the areas of Hamadam and Azerbaijan where they remain today.
No evidence of complete Seljuk rugs or fragments remain, although a quantity from Asia Minor still exist, these are very similar to those woven in Persia under Turkish influence. Discoveries can be put into three groups, three complete carpets, five fragments found in Konya, the Seljuk capital in 1905, and a further collection uncovered in the Eshrefoglu Mosque in Beyshehir in 1930, there are also seven fragments found in Fostat, Egypt.
The Seljuks were of Turkoman stock, all Seljuk remnants contain floral designs. There are also fragments of Turkoman weavings that contain red octagonal shapes, this shows an affinity between early Chinese and Mongolian weaving of a similar age.
The famous Demotte Shah Nameh had written an extremely important manuscript which is datable to he 14th century. The book was named after a New York dealer who divided the contents after failing to sell it complete at the beginning of the 1900’s.
At this time, the rugs of Persia were of geometric design, interestingly, the arriving Mongol conquerors arrived with Chinese rugs and artifacts, often depicting flowers, animals and birds along with well established symbolic motifs.
Early Weaving - Carpets & Rugs
It is not known exactly where and when pile-knotted rugs and carpets were first produced, there is one authority that suggests that in all probability rugs have nomadic origin. With the rearing of sheep being one of the known sources of income and clothing material for the nomadic community, coping with extreme weather exposure (warm and cold) would have triggered the development of basic weaving skills. The need for good quality floor covering and insulation would have superseeded the use of animal skins.
Ancient scriptures and classical authours bear reference to the art of weaving, although no clear evidence points to references realting to pile carpets. Fragments found in ancient Egyptian tombs dating back to the second millenium B.C suggest that flat weaving was in good development.
The Pazyryk Rug
In 1947, Russian archaeologists made a discovery of dramatic impact, they unearthed a pile knotted rug in a Scythian burial ground dating back to the 5th century B.C, it was made using the Ghiordes knot (approximately 200 to the square inch) Other fragments found in the same location were tied using the Senneh knot.
The Pazyryk rug conforms to the general arrangement of many recent Oriental carpets, with the main rug body surrounded by minor and major borders. The central field has madder red ground apon with rows of squares incorporating floral designs. The Pazyryk rug exhibits a mixture of Assyrian, Scythian and Archaemenian motifs, widely regarded as having as being of Persian origin, with some design similarities that look like alabaster slabs which could be found at the palaces of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal between 600 & 700 B.C.