Buyer beware, all that looks like a silk rug, might not be!

Recently, a client brought into the offices of Art of Clean (Cambridge, UK) a rug she had purchased whilst on holiday in India. She bought it during a busy shopping trip to a tourist market. The rug had been sold to her as a genuine silk rug and she paid a considerable price. On returning home to the UK, she had become suspicious about the rug and in different light conditions, our customer had noticed a stain and bought the rug to us to be cleaned.

Unfortunately, for many tourists a rug which is sold as a silk rug commands a much higher price than other rugs. It has also been known for the seller to offer a written guarantee that the rug is silk which further misleads the buyer.

Before we could clean the rug, our technicians had to make some checks to determine whether the rug was made from silk, because not all materials and fabrics are cleaned in the same way. The results came back as silk, which was fortunate for the customer.

There are several ways to tell is your rug is made from silk but these are not things you could do whilst travelling.

The first way is a bit destructive and requires snipping a small piece of the fringe and with a flame (we recommend leaving this to an expert, but the process is useful to know), light the material and quickly put it out again. The smoke should smell like burning hair. (Cotton will have a smell like paper).

Another way is to do a specialised chemical test, but once again this is best left to the experts.