Rug cleaning
in Santa Clara.

Santa Clara begins at the mission. Mission Santa Clara was founded on 12 January 1777, eighth in the chain of twenty-one, and the church standing today was rebuilt after fire took the previous one in 1926. Santa Clara University grew around it from 1851 and is the oldest operating institution of higher education in the state. The blocks beside both are the Old Quad, named for the quadrangle in the town survey of 1866, with the original street grid still in use. The houses there are pre-war, and the ones we collect from usually sit on a raised foundation over a crawl space rather than on slab. Two things follow. Damp travels up through a board floor like that, and a rug that has not moved in years holds it, so the back of the weave turns musty long before the pile looks tired. The rugs themselves are often old: inherited Persians and Turkish village pieces, vegetable-dyed, with hand-knotted fringes vacuumed down to nothing. We wash cold by immersion, which holds those dyes, and rebuild fringe and selvedge at the bench rather than trimming the problem off. Newer addresses on the Rivermark side, built from 2002 on the old Agnews land, send flat-woven and tufted work instead, and that is handled differently again.

Call or text (650) 675-8160, a line that runs 8am to 8pm all week, and we will hold a collection window for you and confirm it inside a day. Old Quad streets are narrow and usually parked out, so tell us where the van can stop and we will work to it. Every rug is dusted, washed and dried at the workshop in Newark by whoever collected it, then brought back by the same hands.