GROWING up in a family of antique rug dealers introduced me to the art of weaving. Thames Carpets is our family business and has been based in Henley since 1956.My parents acquired the company in 2001, which meant my brother Hugo and I were brought up with the business.Carpets were our playground. If we weren’t climbing over them we were crawling under them, often mystifying clients with piles of “moving” rugs.They say you’re a product of your environment and a childhood spent immersed in rugs left me deeply connected to them. Now I am in my mid-twenties, there’s nothing that evokes a sense of comfort in me more than the musty scent of a pile of old rugs.

Another prevalent feature of my childhood was travelling, as any antiques dealer from the pre-online auction era would understand.Weekends and school holidays consisted of frequent road trips across the UK, visiting as many auction houses as we could.I applaud my parents for their ability to keep me and my brother entertained during those long journeys. In fact they were so successful that one of my first words was “cattlecod”, an attempt to request the auction catalogue! I even dabbled in our weaving department, commissioning my favourite Crayola butterfly drawing to be woven into a rug.When I finished my studies at the Arts Educational Schools in London, it was clear to me that my heart lay in the antique rug world and that it was time to return home to Thames Carpets.

Founded in 1956 by Joseph Bernadout, Thames Carpets specialises in the cleaning, restoration and sales of antique carpets and rugs. As reported by the Henley Standard in a 1996 article marking the company’s 40th anniversary, our previous work has included restoring the carpets from Windsor Castle after the fire there in June 1992, cleaning the carpet at Westminster Abbey for a royal wedding and much work for the National Trust.

We were originally located in Reading Road by Christ Church and later moved to Newtown Road. It’s so heartwarming to hear stories from people who knew the business in its earlier days. Only the other day someone stopped by and said he used to work for us in the Nineties and he was pleased to see we were still going.

A client said she used to visit the shop when she was a little girl and could still remember watching the repairman restoring the rugs.It’s a true honour to receive such loyalty and interest from the people of Henley.

We have a display of historical souvenirs of the business. I’m not sure who the people in the photographs are but I’ve been told that the man sitting at the table is possibly the then Shah of Iran.He was known to be passionate about encouraging the art of carpet-weaving. Even without this assumption, the display tells us that the business originates from a notable carpet shop in the Middle East.

My father Bahram worked in a carpet-weaving factory from a young age in a small village in the mountains of north-west Iran. The village is called Babreh, which is not an Islamic name because the natives were Christian. Islam conquered them much later than the rest of Iran. My father came to England in the Eighties to study mathematics at university but was pleasantly surprised to discover the country’s appreciation of oriental carpets.With his rug-weaving expertise and an unwavering passion for the art, he left university and embarked on a career in hand-woven rugs and textiles.

It seems the Eighties were heaven on earth for the rug world. My dad has an endless collection of entertaining stories from his adventures. The characters were an eccentric cast of dealers and collectors. Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting one of his old friends, who is the owner of a well-established rug business in New York. He told me a great story of how my dad once bid on a rug at an auction for £22,000 with only £50 to his name. He was confident it was a masterpiece! Fortunately, this dealer called him and offered to buy it for £2,000 more than he had bid it for and to collect and pay for it himself. A serendipitous ending to a brave move.

I love the stories of the epic country house sales that lasted several days, selling all sorts of antiquities, with bidders competing on hundreds of items without hesitation.My dad joked to the auctioneer at one of these auctions many years later that “that auction cost me my marriage”. They say every cloud has a silver lining and this proved true in the event that led to the introduction of my family to Thames Carpets. Mr Bernadout had retired and his sons David and Cecil were running the business. You may be aware that some handmade rugs have a signature at the bottom; this is the signature of the weaver.

David and Cecil faced disaster when their repairer accidentally removed the signature on a client's rug. They were advised that there was only one repairer in the UK that could re-weave the signature, my father, who was then running a repair business in Lincolnshire.They went on to work together regularly and when David and Cecil retired my dad was delighted to be given the opportunity to purchase the business.

The experience I’ve gained at Thames Carpets so far has been invaluable. The expertise within the business and the trust of clients has enabled me to work with exceptional people who have been greatly inspiring and supportive.I’ve handled items that I only dreamed of working with so early in my career and discovered that nothing educates you more than hands-on experience.

Whether it’s inspecting a rug for restoration or examining a new item of stock, being able to see and touch the rug teaches you things you simply cannot learn from a photograph. It exposes you to the subtle differences in the quality of materials. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to innovate the business further and hope my passion will captivate and engage a new audience in this timeless artform.

It’s clear to see that our love for antique carpets has not dwindled and rightly so. It’s a rare pleasure to find something that is artistic, of exceptional quality and functional, not to mention the amount of history it carries, whether it’s a villager’s rug that was woven intermittently throughout a lifetime, resulting in an incongruous design and shape, or a piece commissioned for royalty.

Founded in 1956 by Joseph Bernadout, Thames Carpets specialises in the cleaning, restoration and sales of antique carpets and rugs. As reported by the Henley Standard in a 1996 article marking the company’s 40th anniversary, our previous work has included restoring the carpets from Windsor Castle after the fire there in June 1992, cleaning the carpet at Westminster Abbey for a royal wedding and much work for the National Trust.

I often wonder what these rugs have seen, every footstep leaving a mark of the person gone by. I believe that they do so much more than their original purpose of providing warmth and decoration — that they have a more divine purpose, which they so humbly achieve. It’s this which makes our clients so often refer to them as “part of the family”, which I can absolutely relate to.