Don't do it Yourself!
By: Alan J. Heavens


Home & Design Magazine
Friday, April 10, 1998

If you don't know the difference between a Persian knot and a Turkish knot, if you can't tell a weft from a warp, please don't attempt to repair your expensive Oriental rug yourself. Here's a case where duct tape, a needle and black thread won't do. Just as there are ancient techniques involved in weaving a rug, there are tried-and-true methods of closing holes or restoring fringe. To make such repairs, Parviz Yathrebi employs craftspeople from Azerbaijan, Armenia, and other areas of the former Soviet Union.

Yathrebi, a Kurd from the city of Senneh in northwestern Iran, buys, sells and repairs Oriental rugs as his shop, Woven Treasures, in the 2200 block of South Street.

"Many women in the Middle East spin rug yarn," Yathrebi said, seated in his shop at a table covered with an Oriental rug. "My family were weavers. My aunt was a weaver. My grandfather bought and sold rugs. Even my mother - who sat in my kitchen when she visited Philadelphia [and] did it as we talked."

The rugs that many Westerners consider priceless are essential and rather mundane items in the houses and tents of the peoples who produce them. While Yathrebi considers such rugs valuable, he doesn't hesitate turning irreparable rugs into pillows or using pieces as floor mats in his Land Cruiser. Yet he is quick to chastise a visitor for having failed to thoroughly clean an Oriental - albeit a factory-made Karistan - in a decade.

"You should be doing this every three years," Yathrebi said. "Walking on the rug destroys the fibers, so you need to beat it to get rid of the dust and old fibers, then work in water and shampoo and air-dry the rug in a room."

Again, this is a job best left to a professional, who must have the rug for three weeks to carry out the task properly. Yathrebi, whose prices are standard in the industry, will charge $1.50 per square foot to clean an Oriental, so cleaning a 9-by-12-foot rug costs about $150.

A 2,500-year-old-skill

Rug-making is second nature to the people who live along the old Silk Road that carried merchants from China to Istanbul. It is a 2,500-year-old-skill that has come down through the generation, although Yathrebi, who came to study in the United States in the late 1970s, allowed his interest in it to lie dormant while he learned English and pursued a degree in civil engineering.

In the early 1980s, Yathrebi was studying at Widener University when he came to that fork in the road that most people reach during their lives. Yathrebi chose a path that took him back to his Kurdish roots and forward as a dealer in Oriental rugs.

Building on knowledge acquired as a child in a household of weavers and rug buyers, he read every book he could borrow or buy and picked the brains of every expert who would talk to him.

To assist him, he has assembled a cast of craftspeople from the countries renowned for the Oriental rugs they make and sell to the world. One of his craftsmen - Levan Avadisian, who hails from Armenia - can replicate every knot that identifies the rug's place of origin: country, region, city, village or tribe.

Some rugs are restored by the men who work in his shop. Others are farmed out to other craftspeople, "depending on the weave of the rug and the importance of the job."

"The restoration of rugs is an art in itself," Yathrebi said. "When you repair a rug, you are repairing the love and passion and work and time of the person who made it."

Not every rug should be repaired and restored.

"You have to justify restoration by the value and rarity of the rug," he said. "Most 1950s reproductions - Chinese and Indian - won't hold or increase in value if they are restored."

An antique rug will hold its value, and restoration of a rug appraised at $8,000 could increase its value to $12,000. The oldest rugs - from the 14th and 15th centuries and older - should not undergo restoration, said Yathrebi.

"The way it is is what makes it so valuable," Yathrebi said. "It is a good idea to stabilize the rug - put in some warps [foundation threads of the rug] and wefts [the thread that brings the rug perpendicular to the warp] where needed to stabilize the foundation or mount it on a fabric to make it sure it doesn't deteriorate further."

Determining how and whether work should be done involves some detective work.

"It's an identification process," Yathrebi said. "First, I determine the origin of the rug. Then, I must decide if the rug is an original or a reproduction. If it is an original with many of the original characteristics and it is valuable, then I evaluate the damage."

If the rug is original and had major problems, and the cost of restoration will exceed the value of the rug, Yathrebi recommends forgoing repairs, "unless the owner has a special and sentimental reason to see the rug repaired."

The causes and kings of damage vary greatly.

"The damage can be holes caused by moths or by dry rot," he said. "There can be missing or frayed fringes and bindings. There can be holes in the body of the rug, or the rug can be worn right to the foundation."

Before restoration begins, Yathrebi washes the rug. The cleaner the rug, the easier it will be to evaluate the damage.

"With older rugs, most of the damage will show after washing," he said. Over the normal life of a rug, the wool fibers break. If you begin restoration on already weakened fibers, the restoration will not last. Broken wool fibers will fall out after you wash the rug."

The weave of the rug determines how much work is involved in restoration and how long it will take.

Where and how rugs are made

There are three categories of Oriental carpet weaving - nomadic, cottage and city - based on the lifestyle of the weavers and where the rugs were made. The value depends on how well the rug is made and the age and interest of the collectors, not on where the rug is woven.

Nomadic, or tribal, carpets are usually woven on a loom that lies on the ground. The end product reflects the history and tradition of the tribe, which is repeated from generation to generation. The weave rugs in this category are usually plain and often the easiest to duplicate. The warps, wefts and foundation are wool. There are few colors, patterns are geometrical, and edges are irregular. There are fewer than 80 knots per square inch, and piles are medium to long.

Cottage or village carpets are made on vertical looms, often with cotton fiber foundations and short to medium wool piles. They typically have five to 10 colors, have even or irregular edges or a combination of both, and geometrical and floral patterns. There are 60 to 120 knots per square inch.

City rugs are made in workshops having many looms and are sold commercially. Foundations are of cotton, wool or silk, with wool for the medium to short pile. Some silk is used. There are typically 18 to 20 colors, and patterns are primarily floral and very formal. The rugs have between 100 and 300 knots per inch.

"The city has influenced tribal rug-makers, who are beginning to use more floral patterns," Yathrebi said. "This trend is producing some very interesting new rugs."

Yathrebi and his repair people need to be walking encyclopedias of knowledge and technique to do their work.

"If the foundation of the rug is showing, the rug will be re-piled or, if it is a flat-weave rug, a flat-weave technique will be used," Yathrebi said. "If the rug had dry rot, the rotted material will be removed as if it were a cancer until the healthier part of the rug is reached," he said. "Then a bridge connection will be built into the foundation of the rug to connect the healthy areas."

Yathrebi salvages fibers from the foundations of antique rugs that are beyond repair to rebuild the foundations of rugs that can be restored. This way, the fibers more accurately match those of the original rug. "This is the method that museums use when they restore rugs," he said.

Next, the warp and the weft are rebuilt. Yathrebi selects wool that matches the wool in the pile and begins reweaving the carpet. "This way, the original design, color and fineness of the wool are duplicated."

Wool that Yathrebi uses for repairs typically comes from England or Turkey. English wool is spun by machine; Turkish wool is handspun and colored with vegetable dye.

"Some of the tribal rugs - Caucasian, for example - look nicer if they are repaired with hand-spun wool," he said. "With others, such as Heriz [rugs made in Heriz, India] that need to be woven with the Kashmiri technique, we mix the colors to get the shade for the pattern that we like."

A skein of handspun Turkish wool - weighing about four ounces - costs about $8, he said.

The length of time it takes to restore a rug varies with size and extent of the damage. "An 8 by 10 Heriz with 10 percent of the pile in need of repair can take two weeks to three months," Yathrebi said.

Costs for Yathrebi have ranged from $300 to $20,000, he said.

"A $20,000 repair was the most expensive I've done," he said. "The rug, which was valued at $200,000, was owned by a man from Germany who kept flying to Philadelphia to check on the work. My original estimate was lower than $20,000," he said. "After a few visits, the man told me that I had underestimated the extent of the work, but not to worry because he would pay me the difference. He did," Yathrebi said. "The job took a year, and the wool to repair it cost $1,000.