By the late Jack Haldane (Izmidlian)
In my time at the P.L.A. (from 1948 onwards) the customs seals were made, as I remember it, of metal thin enough to be malleable, shaped roughly like the figure 8 except in the middle. One half of the seal had a lip all round. The labels were printed on to stout canvas. An stout needle would be threaded with strong twine and then forced through the fabric of the rug or carpet not far from a convenient corner. The loose ends were then tied in a knot and put onto one half of the seal. This would then be folded and the whole squashed together by a tool not unlike a pair of pliers. This would cause the lip to be squashed into the other half of the "8" and made the removal of the label impossible without destroying the seal.
The tickets came as a roll of stout cards, perforated and pre-printed, and with a hole punched them (I don't remember if they had an eyelet round the hole). This, too, would be affixed to the piece using the same stout twine and the same needle. The knot securing this in place was never sealed.
For most goods, the insertion of the needle caused little if any damage to the rug. On fine pieces the effect was certainly noticeable and on really fine items there is no question but that rugs were damaged. After all, how can a steel needle which was probably around 5 mm wide near the tip possibly get between the warps and wefts without there being a bad effect on these ?
When the goods were sent to the washers (Shahinian, Abadjian and possibly others) the washers' staff would staple the customs label to the rug or carpet, but remove and store the card labels. These would be put back on the piece after it was dry and ready to return to the appropriate consignors. These staples would have been of iron or steel, which is why they frequently left rust marks on the Customs label and, not so frequently,on the fabric of the rug of carpet.
I'm pretty sure that items imported before the war (and there were quite a few of these around in the late 1940s and early 1950s) were sealed on the same manner.
The late Jack Haldane 2012 assisted and recorded by Clive Rogers
Shortly to open 21 July 2026, we are currently engaging in the working up and provisions of carpet services to the visitor centre at this famous house on the outskirts of London. Termed 'House of Secrets', the house also known as Trent Park House, played an important role in WWII along with Bletchley Park in wartime covert surveillance. It hosted senior German officer prisoners of war, who were eavesdropped upon whilst enjoying the comparative freedoms of the gardens and grounds, with the odd whiskey to get tongues wagging...
Following a discovery of a pair of 1920s Donegal kneeler runners at the local town parish church of St. Laurences in September 2024 work was commissioned to rejuvenate the carpet and brassware on the steps leading leading from the Nave to the Chancel. The task was tricky as the brassware and fittings were all in a poor state and the carpet was starting to unravel and therefore needed binding not to mention fixings into marble steps !. The result was splendid and fully deserving of the not inconsiderable effort for what might otherwise have appeared a straightforward task.
To our amazement apparently the Natural History Museum offer a commercial pest control service which includes an ‘ Anoxic ‘ treatment. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/services/facilities/quarantine.html Also reliable products for domestic use may be purchased from the company Histrionics https://historyonics.com/ whose principal we understand comes from an academic science background. Also there is a new company ANOXART who specialise in anoxic insect irradiation whose apararatus for their argon method is pictured here. Also as per in a previous blog we offer free freezing treatment for my own customers https://www.orient-rug.com/blogs/news/clinical-moth-treatment-a-free-service-to-customerts
