Understanding Oxidized Rugs

Transcript

We’re going to talk about oxidized rugs. I really hate that name, oxidized rug. But it really doesn’t do it justice and I think we need to come up with a new name. We discussed that and maybe we’ll have to invent one for it. But that’s basically what the industry calls it. I’m not sure exactly how that plays into the public, but this is an oxidized rug.

Basically what an oxidized rug is—you take a rug that’s foundation is wool. Usually the pattern part of the rug is usually silk or viscose. And when you get done with weaving the rug, it’s all one pile, it’s all smooth. And you take it and you wash it. You wash it in a caustic acid type of a wash. The caustics basically take the wool down and take it out. Basically it destroys the wool and takes it all the way to the back and you get that beautiful relief work. And also you get subtlety of color change to the silk, as well as to the wool that’s in the background, so you get that relief effect to it.

I absolutely love this product. It’s a new product, out in the last year. It’s been getting more and more popular, especially at the high end of the market because of the silk used in the rug. It’s usually not an inexpensive rug because it’s usually very finely woven as well as using…50% of it at least or more it’s usually silk, so that adds to the cost of it.

But what it does to the feel of the rug—I love that that intrinsic, old, worn, beautiful feel to it. It’s like a vintage rug with pile and made with silk. It gives you that nice warm, beautiful, homey feel that you love to sit around and just feel the rug. It just feels great. That silk is beautiful.

You look at it from one end and you would say it’s one color. You look at from the other end, and it looks like another color because of the silk. Silk is very translucent and basically it bends and reflects the light that’s in the room. It’s a very moody rug. At nighttime it’s going to look like a different rug than it does during the day with a lot of bright light on it. From one end of the room or from the side of the rug you get a lot of differences and variances to the coloring of the rug, which is, I think, the beauty or the moodiness of it. It has a lot of soul, which I absolutely love about it. That’s what an oxidized rug is.