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The first job with any silk rug is establishing whether it is silk at all. A large proportion of what is sold as silk is viscose, and the two need opposite handling.
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Oriental Rugs
Genuine silk is strong, warm to the touch, and its lustre shifts as you change viewing angle. Viscose feels cool and slightly heavy, shows every footprint, and can leave a faint chalky residue on damp fingers. A single fibre burn test from the underside settles it: silk smells of burnt hair and forms a brittle bead, viscose smells of burning paper and leaves soft grey ash. Sellers use names like art silk, bamboo silk and banana silk, all of which mean viscose.
Silk loses some strength when wet but recovers. Viscose is regenerated cellulose and loses a large proportion of its strength when saturated, crushes permanently under light pressure while damp, and yellows as it dries through oxidation in the fibre itself. That yellowing is not a stain and cannot be cleaned out afterwards. Plain water alone, with no product involved, can permanently mark a viscose rug.
Silk rugs are washed with minimal moisture, lower temperatures than wool tolerates, and pH-controlled solutions, then dried rapidly and flat with the pile groomed while still damp. Silk highlights within a predominantly wool rug, common in Hereke and finer Persian work, mean the whole rug is treated to the silk standard rather than the wool one. Drying speed matters more here than anywhere else.
Blot immediately with a white cloth, pressing rather than rubbing, and get air moving across the area straight away rather than letting it dry slowly. Do not apply water to a viscose rug in an attempt to dilute a spill, because the water itself is the hazard. If the rug is valuable, stop after blotting and call rather than experimenting.
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