Understanding Vintage Rugs

Transcript

We are going to talk about vintage rugs, and vintage rugs is a very unique product that’s really popular today. A lot of people think that vintage rugs are rugs that were old rugs that are aged and have been around for a long time and they are basically antiques, or maybe they are not antiques or…they really don’t know what the difference between a vintage rug and an antique rug is.

A vintage rug is a rug that’s made to look old. It has what we call a vintage — like in jeans today where they’ll wear it out and make it look like it’s been, you know, around for a hundred years and it’s got holes in it and things of that nature. Where, in a rug, basically what we do is we take an old Persian rug — usually, I mean it could be any rug, it doesn’t have to be that, it could be a machine made rug, it doesn’t really matter — basically we shear it down to the back so it’s almost zero pile. We’ll will take it and then we’ll strip the color. Usually it’s some kind of caustic or chemicals that we use in order to strip the color out, so once you get done, it’s a rug that basically has no color in it. It’s just basically shadows of grays and browns mostly, and maybe hints or hues of blues and blacks, that kind of show the design which was woven into it originally.

You have taken a perfectly brand new rug, very bright and colorful, and you have taken all the color out of it that point. Then there’s also a process that we do also what we call over-dyeing, and that can also be part of that vintage look. The rug behind me is an example of basically a vintage rug that’s been over-dyed. So we’ve take a 30-year old Persian rug, and basically what we’ve done is stripped it down, sheared it, recolored it to make it more into today’s world.

It is so popular, I can’t even explain how popular it is. Mainly because it looks so real, it looks so worn, it looks so inviting, and also it’s just a dream to decorate around. You can imagine that you’re not like most oriental rugs with a lot of patterns and color, you know, popping off the rug. This is a rug that’s very subtle and you back off of it 10 to 15 feet into the room, you really don’t even see the pattern. You just see the beautiful warmth of the coloring and the irregularities to those colorings.

What you are seeing in the back, the white stuff, that is actually the foundation of the rug popping through, because again you are at zero pile, so there’s little imperfections that happen because of that. Also, there are also some damages done to that as well, so we correct those damages as best that can be done, and so part of the vintage thing is to have those holes in them or wornness in them or repairs in them. Either you get it or you don’t, I always have customers who get it home and they’ll realize, ”Hey, it looks like it’s been repaired”. Yes, it has, and it’s been done professionally, it’s going to hold up, but a lot of people are saying, ”I want my money back”. I can understand that too, and we unfortunately have to accept that that is part of them not understanding the product, and we didn’t really explain it enough, but it really is a gorgeous product that allows us to take rugs that are…not selling, basically, and convert them into a very popular, hot item, that has a lot of appeal. So that’s what a vintage rug or an over-dyed rug can be.