FACTORALY - E70 CARPET

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Carpets and rugs have been around for some time. From floors covered with rushes to modern deep-pile luxury, we've always enjoyed walking on something soft and lush. As always, clic on the pics for more information and fun facts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

hello bruce hi simon how you doing today i'm very well thank you sir how are you i'm excellent thank you very much jolly good to hear it And hello to all of our lovely listeners. Oh, them. Those lot. Hello. Factoralites. Our factoralites, yes, absolutely. Excellent.

All of you obviously know exactly who we are and what we're doing here, but just in case someone has accidentally stumbled along here whilst looking for a completely different podcast, I'm Simon Wells. And I'm Bruce Fielding, apparently. Yes, apparently. Allegedly. So it says on the label. We're both voice artists. Yes, we are. And we do this for a living.

Not podcasting. Not this, but no. We do the voicey stuff for a living. The stuff that goes like this. Yes, indeed. Yes. we do audiobooks and advertising and yeah things like that and sometimes pretending to be other people absolutely yes so when we're not doing that sort of thing for a living we come here we sit in our respective little sound booths and we record some wonderful interesting facts because we are both nerds that's true and we love this sort of thing yeah i'm a proud nerd so am i yes and i'm

full of stuff full of facts my brain is stuffed full of them yes although generally not about carpet no i didn't know an awful lot about carpets until this very moment so that's what today's i mean factually is all about taking a boring subject and making interesting for 30 minutes but um hair carpets so what can one say about carpets uh they they didn't sound nicely i've got carpet on my desk i've got carpet on my desk as well. I've got some. All right, let's compare carpets.

What sort of carpet have you got? I've got a very nice sort of thick pile blue carpet, which is actually an off cut from my hall carpet. Really? Yeah. I've got a very thick, fluffy blue bath mat. Okay. Wrapped around my desk for sound deadening purposes

fabulous so um i mean you know you're you're the expert on etymology and stuff so carpet well so they say um so carpet the etymology of carpet um i had to try and work out why this was the case it didn't make sense for a while but um carpet comes from the latin capere meaning to pluck or to pull apart okay which sounds sounded odd to me and you don't want to pull apart your carpet but that's the method of actually making the carpet fluffy you pluck at the threads in order to pull them up and make them make them fluffy so it came from that and then it went sort of via french carpet and then into english carpet um the word first appeared as it as it's currently written in in english around the 13th century do they have carpets in the 13th century apparently so yeah i think they probably will probably rugs rather than carpet well exactly yes we'll get on

to the the definition shortly yes um back in back those days, the word carpet just meant a heavy decorative cloth. For a while, the word was interchangeable with bedspread and tablecloth and things like that. It was just a decorative cloth, not necessarily used for carpety purposes. Right. But yeah, they've been around for a while. Okay. There are suggestions that carpets have been around since at least the 7th millennium BC. Right. Don't know of any evidence suggesting that, but some say that they've been around forever. Yeah, I mean, you know, you hear stories about Cleopatra, don't you?

You do. But that's apparently not true. Oh, really? Remind us of the story and then tell us why it's not true. Okay. So the story is that her entrance, well, I think we've talked about in our episode on perfume. We talked about Cleopatra's entrance into Rome, about how she perfumed the ship's sails. Oh, the sails of her ships.

Yeah, that's right. So that people could smell her coming. But there was also a story that she was carried before Caesar, wrapped up in a rug. And if you watch the films and stuff, they sort of unroll Elizabeth Taylor in a rug. Oh, yes. Okay. I can picture that. What Plutarch actually said was that she was carried into Rome in like a laundry basket.

Oh. The sort of sack that you would put old bed linen into. That seems slightly less ceremonial, isn't it? Yeah. So all the paintings about Cleopatra and rugs and stuff. Yeah. It was a laundry basket. According to Plutarch, who was...

You know we talk about Pliny. Yes. And the huge quantities of salt that you have to take his wisdom with. Yes, Pliny the Elder. So Plutarch is a little bit like that. He's been known to exaggerate. Right, okay, fine. Well, so somewhere between a laundry basket and a beautiful Persian rug.

Yes, exactly. I mean, not the only person who was carried into somewhere. Genghis Khan, or are we supposed to call him Genghis now? I think we have changed it to Genghis, but it doesn't feel right to me. Genghis Khan once was going to execute somebody. And then when he saw him, he realized that he was an old friend, like a boyhood friend. Okay. And he thought, well, I can't just execute an old friend.

Yeah. So I said, you what i'll wrap him up in a carpet and then i'll just beat him to death sure yeah because then i won't see him yeah yeah well that makes perfect sense yes so this is um i think historically what we what i'm picturing every time you've mentioned someone being rolled up in a carpet, I'm picturing what is essentially a rug, a large roll of rug sort of carried over your shoulder. There's a difference between a carpet and a rug, at least in modern terms, which is to say that carpets, generally speaking, go wall to wall. Fitted.

They're fitted. They're made to fit the room in which they sit. Whereas a rug is an independent loose item that's just placed on the floor and can be moved around. Unless it's a Persian carpet. Well, yes, exactly. Which I would call a carpet as opposed to a Persian rug. As a rug, would you? Oh, that's controversial.

And then there are runners. Yes, all sorts of terminology that goes with this. It's quite interesting, actually. The word rug is an old Scandinavian word, ruga, which means exactly what we've just described. Yes. I found the oldest surviving carpet, which to my mind is a rug, but never mind,

was made around the 5th century BC and it's known as the Pazjurik carpet. Okay. And it was excavated in Siberia in 1949 in fairly good nick. It's sort of got griffin designs around the borders. It was excavated in Siberia in 1949 in fairly good nick. It's sort of got griffin designs around the borders. It's got red dye in it made from crushed cochineal.

It's made of a mixture of wool and goat hair. So that's quite old. But yeah, I still think that's a rug rather than a carpet. Interesting. I feel that, you know, we talk about magic carpets. Oh, yes, we do. Yes. And you would say that was a rug. We don't talk about a magic rug. No, you don't. It doesn't sound quite the same, does it?

Unless it's some sort of toupee that works really well. Maybe we can just agree that they're roughly interchangeable. Yes, let's do that. Magic carpets are interesting. Yes. The idea of a flying carpet is quite something. I mean, that sort of idea is taken, I guess, from prayer carpets, prayer rugs. Oh, yes.

Okay, yeah. So prayer rugs are also quite interesting because they, like a Muslim prayer rug, has various features on it, including something that looks like an arrow, which you kind of point at Mecca. Oh, I see. So you point that to the east. And there are usually sort of designs on it of things like a mosque lamp or water or a basin or a mountain, which will depict things. I think the mountain depicts the Carver Stone. There's all sorts of things on a prayer rug that, if you look closely, I don't know whether you've ever looked closely at a prayer rug.

I don't think I have, actually, no. There's a lot of interesting design on it. Lots of symbolism. Yeah. The other thing that's unique is another sort of carpet which i'm sure you'll be incredibly familiar with right which is the axminster which is the home of carpet sure especially designs carpets for one particular place well several particular places um um no go on okay so axminster designs carpets for weather spoons so every single weather spoons has a unique carpet inside it no they are they are all every

single one is special to that particular pub and and usually has some reflection on the name of the pub. I really feel compelled to go to my local spoons now and see what's there. Yep. How fascinating. Now that's interesting because I read that Axminster carpet is one of the most expensive carpets produced in the UK because it's particularly good quality, it's durable, it's quite, you know, the wool that it's made from is good quality. Wetherspoons is not necessarily renowned for expensive quality no but they are renowned for supporting um british industry that's true and restoring british buildings and and yeah doing

a lot for i mean axminster have been making carpets since 1755. Have they really? Yeah. They've been going a long time. I mean, they gradually fell into, you know, there weren't too many being made after the First World War. Sure, yeah. And so in 1937, I think it was Chuck Woolwitty who discovered that X-Men used to be this wonderful centre for making carpets. And so we should do that again. I'm going to start the carpet factory up again and start making the best carpets in the world i mean you know you find

axminster carpets in rolls royces yes of course you find them everywhere that there's plush luxury yeah yeah i think we we used to um import our carpets from all over the place persia turkey afghanistan places like that until we started making them out ourselves yes um but then once we'd sort of got the hang of it and you know we have quite a significant wool trade we have an awful lot of industrial mills in the north and so on so it makes sense that we would have turned our hands to to carpet making we also have quite a lot of sheep we We do, yes. So we can make proper wool carpets as opposed to the nylon ones. In Kentish Town, not far from where I live, there used to be a whole load of carpet shops.

Like every shop on the road was a carpet shop. And I used to think, why are they all carpet shops? Selling Persian rugs and things like that. And I realized that the building opposite was a bonded warehouse. So that was where all the rugs used to come into the UK. And it was an easy place. Like if you've got a carpet shop, you might as well have it directly opposite the bonded carpet warehouse. Yeah, sure.

Minimum transportation. Yes. Just carry the things across on your shoulder yeah brilliant um when i when i picture someone fitting a carpet you sort of picture two two people carrying this huge huge carpet out of the back of a van um apparently uh typical rolls of carpet are between 13 and 16 feet wide okay which is sort of in keeping with that idea it takes two people to carry the thing must be quite heavy um and if you're trying to make a fitted carpet larger than that you sew them together right you say so they used to be sewn they are now seamed seamed and apparently this process uses something called a seaming iron and seaming tape. And it's sort of heat activated tape that you put on the back of the carpet and iron with a seaming iron.

Yes. And you make them up to the right size. And then you have those sort of wooden rods at the sides of the room. Gripper rod. With little tacks that you sort of stretch the carpet and put them onto the grippers. You have that funny tool that you see people kicking with their knee in order to jam the carpet.

God, you know more about this process than I do. I've done a lot of carpeting. Have you? Not as much as Buckingham Palace or something like that. I would imagine they do have quite a few carpets. They do. They have 830,000 square feet of carpet in Buckingham Palace. Say again? 830,000 square feet.

That's a lot of carpet, isn't it? That's a lot of carpet. Wow. I had a quick look at how carpets are made, because you sort of get different thicknesses and depths, don't you? You get a nice, big, fluffy shag pile. Shag pile. Exactly, all of that stuff. What's a pile?

Right, so pile is purely the name given to fabric that sticks up away from the base material um and apparently you have when carpets are woven you weave a piece of cloth with technical terminology here uh warp and weft yep which i've heard of before but never really looked into the warp is the vertical threads that are held in place in a loom the weft are the horizontal threads that are woven in between those and then you get the pile which is a separate thread which traditionally was hand knotted in between those other threads now you know largely done by machine and these things have different densities different thicknesses different lengths and that's what makes up you know whether you have a thin pile or a thick pile carpet um the thicker it is the the higher the number of fibers that are knotted in the longer it takes the more expensive

it is yeah etc so the idea of that thick pile carpet is is sort of quite a luxurious item would take a very long time to to make they can be quite expensive, can't they? They can, yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, for no apparent reason. I looked up how much it would cost to carpet a Gulfstream aeroplane. Of course you did. A private jet. Sure. £75,000. Really?

Just to carpet a jet. Goodness me. Up to, to be fair. I suppose it's quite bespoke,'t it they're going to have to be tailor-made and measured and yeah and going up the side slightly and all that stuff when you start looking into carpets it's there's quite a lot there there's a well there's a lot of skin and dust and stuff there oh yes, yes. And, you know, people who sell wooden floors will tell you how unhealthy carpets are. Yeah.

And they contain all sorts of horrible stuff. But actually, the horrible stuff that they contain, things like skin, allergens, food, dust, dirt. A carpet can, if you don't clean it it hold up to about four times its own weight of horrible stuff oh my goodness but actually if you think about it that stuff would be floating around the place if it wasn't captured by a carpet well yes that's true you just have a very thick layer of dust on your wooden floor yes or floating around in the air in the same way that you would brush a wooden floor you vacuum clean a carpet or you or you wash a carpet yes so i mean you know vacuum cleaners have been around for a long time and they they were specifically

invented because they were carpets oh is that right yeah i suppose that makes sense you wouldn't really need one would you if you didn't have a carpet you just use a dustpan and brush yeah exactly yeah oh interesting i read that um pounds of soil, skin flakes and other material can collect in your carpet per year. Bacteria can live up to four weeks in a carpet. Yeah. So, yeah, I think having them cleaned quite frequently is probably a good idea. The carpet in my hallway is blue. Yes.

There is another colour of carpet, which is quite famous. Red? Correct. Red carpets. Red carpets have been around since about 450 BC. No.

So, yeah, so it was written that Clytemnestra put some down for Agamemnon when he was returning from one of his sessions. Right. And, yeah, so red carpet's been put down for special travellers or special guests for quite a long time. Is that just by virtue of the fact that traditionally red was quite an expensive dye to make? Which we've talked about before, yes. Yes. So red is like the most luxurious colour is red.

Yeah. Or gold, but red generally. Brilliant. In 1902, the British, well, what was then British Rail Service, started to put red carpets down outside the first class carriages really on the railway so that was that was one thing and then famously in 1961 the academy of motion picture arts and sciences you know the one that gives out the oscars oh the academy academy the academy academy awards right so they started putting down red carpet in 1961. Oh, okay, right.

And famously, people started to dress up. Nobody really dressed up for the Oscars, properly dressed up, until about 1969. Really? When Barbara Streisand walked along the red carpet dressed up in the most amazing stuff that you know pitchy got from a designer and nowadays designers you know you know fall over themselves to give yes fabulous clothes for the red carpet just as the people who are wearing them fall over themselves because they're wearing the fabulous designs absolutely yes i've often wondered where the red carpets are kept. Because every venue, every award ceremony, every hotel, every palace, etc., etc., has their own red carpet, which they roll out for these special occasions. There must just be warehouses full of red carpets.

I'm sure there are. In much the same way as there are warehouses full of Christmas decorations and warehouses full of all sorts of things. Yeah, where are they all kept, I wonder? I heard something about there's a warehouse where the bbc used to be and all the itv shows had all of their christmas decorations for their tv shows stored in these places in the bbc no really that's nice to see the two channels getting along together isn't it yes yes so yeah red carpets um if you walk out onto a red carpet that's all that's always nice yes have you ever done so uh yes i have you asked

that question as though you weren't expecting the answer no no i just i i fully expected you to say yes i was thinking of the two of us i know i never have but i assumed at some point you probably had so i i went to the uh film festival at can a few years ago and i was invited to a premiere i walked up the red carpet up to the screening and i got to the top of the stairs and turned around and waved at the um the photographers and they're probably going who the hell is that oh fantastic that's so you there's animal carpets as well made of animal or for animals animals that look like carpets okay so the most most famous one is the carpet shark i've never heard of this the carpet shark yeah it's it's like a flat shark that looks like a carpet okay uh they live in australia right uh barrier reef it's basically camouflage okay as

the bottom of the sea looks like mottled yeah and these carpet sharks have sort of like a mottled look to them and because they're sort of quite flat um they were named carpet sharks that's brilliant do you have photographic evidence of this that we can show to people anywhere bruce oh yes of course we have our show notes aha the blog at factorily.com factorily.com that's the one brilliant i'll put some video of a carpet shark in there and you can have a look at that great there are other things like bags made of carpets uh in in the mary poppins. I mean, you know, a carpet bag is something that was a thing. But it's a bit like travelling with all your stuff in a black bin liner. Yes.

So were they... That's an interesting point, actually, because I'm just suddenly realising that I don't know what a carpet bag is other than in Mary Poppins she has a carpet bag. And because it's made of a magical carpet, it stores huge great items like lampstands and things so generally carpet baggers uh were people who traveled a lot and the term carpet bagger became a political term for somebody who's parachuted into a position so like if you've got

a constituency that the person who's representing that constituency doesn't actually live in right she has just been parachuted into that place even though they know nothing about it have never lived there have no connections they're called carpet baggers because they've basically shown up temporarily with a small carpet bag so they can stay there overnight wow this is precisely my local constituency i shall name no names so were carpet bags so-called because they were made of pieces of carpet? That's exactly right, yes. That is it? Yes.

As simple as that? Very simple. Brilliant. So where do you buy your carpets from generally? Me personally, I would probably go to a nationally renowned exquisite carpet manufacturer such as carpet right yes all those carpet land carpet world carpet right all those places there are a couple of very good uh carpet shop names there's one uh i can't remember where it is now, but it's called Lino Ritchie. Lino Ritchie?

Yes. That's brilliant. That's a carpet shop. And there's also carpet cleaners that have good names. There's Instant Hostel. There's one called Spruce Spring Clean. Oh, well done them. Rather good, eh?

That's brilliant. Speaking of funny names, I was thinking about Underlay. Carpet Underlay. Not the Spanish word for hurry up. Well, exactly. I can't hear Underlay. I can't hear anybody talking about the fact that they're going to get Underlay or they're going to put down some Underlay without picturing Speedy Gonzales.

It's impossible. Yes. But Underlay in itself is fairly interesting i've never really given the stuff too much um thought oh you have to underlay is um a sort of a cushioning item that is put down underneath the carpet so if you've got a hard floor of concrete wood whatever it is you lay down this sheet of underlay which is made of various things from rubber to foam to cork to recycled plastic these days made of felt or felt yes that's right yeah i remember going into a carpet shop once and asking where i could get felt hey they said come this way sir

and that just sort of provides a little bit of extra cushioning a little bit of extra insulation and warmth but it's worth spending the money yeah very high quality underlay because if you spend the money on the on the underlay then the carpet will always feel much more luxurious yes and it increases the longevity of the carpet as well because the bottom of the carpet is now suddenly rubbing against something soft and squishy, rather than rubbing against the bare floor. Yes. So it actually makes the carpet stay intact for longer as well as making it comfier and cozier and a little bit warmer. Ah.

So, Simon, have you got any records for us for carpets? I have, yes. so simon have you got any um have you got any records for us for carpets i have yes um rather unsurprisingly these are all about the biggest the longest etc okay um there are some massive carpets in the world it's ridiculous the guinness world record for the largest hand woven carpet is 60 000 square feet or just over five and a half thousand square meters that's just a little bit smaller than a football pitch okay one single carpet one carpet one carpet um made in several sections and then seamed together in situ yeah this sits in a mosque in Abu Dhabi okay it was installed in 2007 and this has got some fantastic stats on it. This thing took over a decade to make. It incorporated 38 different carpet companies.

It took 3,000 workers to create it, including 1,200 professional weavers. It took 38 tons of wool and cotton. 38 tons? Yep. Wow. And it contains 2.2 billion hand-tied knots. 38 tonnes of wool and cotton. 38 tonnes? Yep. Wow. And it contains 2.2 billion hand-tied knots. So each of those pile threads are hand-tied into the carpet.

You know what I'm going to say next, don't you? That's a big carpet. No, I've been there. Oh, for goodness sake. Have you? I mean, the chandeliers in this place are ridiculous. I mean, the carpet is amazing. Yes. But there's like a whole series of handmade chandeliers,

like beautiful, huge chandeliers around the area, which is quite something. Wow. Right. So you, Bruce Fielding, have trodden on the world's largest handcrafted carpet. Yes, I didn't realise I was doing it at the time, but yes. There you go. Retrospectively, you can insert that memory now.

By comparison, the longest rug, again, debate amongst yourselves whether it's a carpet or a rug, 35,787 feet long. Wow. Just under 11,000 metres, so 11 kilometres worth of rug. That's ridiculous. Isn't it? This was created in 2018 in Kazakhstan as a charity thing. Again, it sort of brought lots of carpet companies and individuals and local enthusiasts and so on

coming together to create this carpet in aid of a children's charity. Wow. But yeah, just under 11 kilometres of rug. That reminds me that you can build houses out of carpets, can't you? Can you? They're called yurts. Oh, right. Yes, of course. Yeah.

You get a sort of a tent frame and sling a whole load of rugs over it and ta-da. Yeah. Carpets. More interesting than you thought they were going to be yes indeed these things often are but you know whenever we do stuff i mean if you subscribe to our podcast which i'm assuming you do and if you don't then you should you should um then you'll find out more stuff like this yes absolutely and when you do find out more stuff like this what should you do sim And when you do find out more stuff like this, what should you do, Simon? You should do so many things. You should tell all of your nerdy friends about it

and extol the virtues of this wonderful show to them so that they can come along and listen as well. Yes, and ideally, tell other people that you don't know by leaving a five-star review and just say something nice about us. Yes, that would be lovely. So thank you so much for coming along and listening to us. We do hope you enjoyed yourselves.

Please come again next time for another fun-filled episode of Factorily. Bye-bye. Au revoir.