Ushak medallion rug, 17th century
Manufacture in Western Anatolia
Brief description of the intervention
The carpet belongs to the precious nucleus of the fourteen oriental rugs of the Franchetti collection, currently divided between the exhibition route and the Ca’ d’Oro warehouses. The restoration and diagnostic analyses carried out in support of the work represented an important moment of knowledge to better define both the conservation and collecting events of the work, in continuity with the start, by the Museum, of a broader conservative revision of the textile heritage of the Gallery.
The restoration work has combined the themes of cleaning and integration, making it possible to experiment with new restoration methods guided both by a scientific approach and by the desire to develop new methodological perspectives in the little-known field of the restoration of the ancient carpet.
In addition, in parallel with the restoration of the building, careful documentation and communication was carried out, shared between all the project partners, with the aim of telling, step by step, the different phases of the intervention and the technical solutions adopted by the restorers in response both to conservation emergencies and to the need to recover the extraordinary colour palette of the wool fleece, compromised by the presence of extensive mimetic remakes.
The activities involved a careful technical and material analysis of the work, documentation of the state of conservation and mapping of the numerous camouflage integrations. The professionals of the Center have analyzed yarns and dyes and carried out stability tests of dyes to determine the most suitable cleaning methods. In fact, it was possible to subject the carpet to a thorough chemical and physical cleaning system by immersion in aqueous solution in a large tank that is specially made at the JRC for the wet cleaning of large textile products, such as carpets or tapestries.
The restoration methodology combined the integrative method (adopted to complete the gaps that severely interrupted the material and decorative unit) and together a conservative approach aimed at maintaining the historical textures of the carpet which, in a state of severe chromatic alteration and irreversibly faded, were made homogeneous to the original colors through an aesthetic adjustment intervention with pictorial retouching, after verification of the retractability of the materials for the intervention.
The intervention was presented as part of the study day dedicated to the restoration of the ancient carpet organised in Milan by IGIIC on 28 February 2024 (https://www.igiic.org/prodotto/restauro-tappeti-ii-edizione/).
CCR and accessibility
