It requires professionals close at hand to help with spotting and to furnish information about care and cleaning.
How to test for silk in a wool rug.
A silk and wool combination rug will show more durability and resistance to stains and water will bead up on a rug with wool content since it is water resistant.
How can you tell the difference between.
Wool and silk rugs can be treated to provide more repellency.
You can take a few threads from the material and burn it with a flame.
Do not trust the rub test or even the burn test.
Authentic oriental rugs are still made from wool.
There is a chemical test that is very reliable but don t try it at home.
Once upon a time if you were to purchase an oriental rug it would have been made from wool or wool and silk without a question.
Since silk and wool are both made from animal protein the burn test is not 100 reliable for determining if a rug is silk or wool.
When you burn the edge of real silk fabric the flame is invisible and it will stop burning as soon as the flame is removed.
A definitive test is to remove a small section of loose thread from the back of the rug and burn it.
See if you can perform a burn test.
However there are many fake rugs out there and they re made from synthetic fibers.