Is the silk in a Thibault Van Renne carpet natural silk or viscose?

Every silk thread in a TVR hand-knotted carpet is natural mulberry silk, hand-spun, hand-skeined, and Swiss-chemical-dyed. Never viscose. Never 'art silk', 'banana silk', 'bamboo silk', 'sari silk', or 'silk-look'. Never blended in secretly. No exceptions.

What is viscose, and why is it sold as silk in luxury rugs?

Viscose is regenerated cellulose — usually wood pulp or bamboo — chemically dissolved and re-extruded as a thread. Its trade names in luxury showrooms include art silk, banana silk, bamboo silk, sari silk, mercerised viscose, and silk-look. It has a high initial shine that closely mimics silk in spotlight conditions, which is exactly why it gets substituted at the €15,000 to €60,000 price bracket — the most common luxury rug bracket.

Why does viscose fail in a rug?

Viscose loses around 50% of its tensile strength when wet, so a spilled glass of wine becomes a permanent crushed patch. Steam cleaning destroys its pile — cellulose fibres swell, mat, and the lustre dies. It wears unevenly under foot traffic and the dyes bleed with humidity. Natural silk does none of these — it gains a deeper sheen with use and survives professional cleaning for generations.

How can I test whether a rug is natural silk or viscose?

A burn test on a small thread snipped from the underside of a fringe. Natural silk burns like singed hair, leaves a small black bead, and smells of protein. Viscose burns like paper, leaves soft grey ash, and smells of wood smoke. If a seller refuses to let you snip a tiny test thread on a rug at this price point, treat the refusal as the answer.

What should I ask a dealer before buying a silk hand-knotted rug?

Five questions. First — what is the fibre composition by weight? Second — can I see the fibre certificate? Third — can I burn-test a strand from the underside? Fourth — was any of the silk substituted, blended, or extended with viscose, art silk, bamboo silk, or sari silk? Fifth — how does this rug behave after professional steam cleaning? A TVR carpet passes all five.

Why we will never sell you viscose as silk

A few years ago a client showed me photos of a "100% silk" rug she had bought through a London dealer for tens of thousands of pounds. After a single professional steam clean it had gone from a dry, lustrous surface to wet, matted noodles — the pile had dissolved. It was viscose, sold to her as silk.

This page is what I should have been able to point her to before she bought it. The problem was never that her rug contained a cellulose fibre. The problem was that nobody told her.

The short version

When a TVR carpet is described as natural silk, it is natural mulberry silk — hand-spun, never relabelled viscose, never "extended" with it secretly.
We also make rugs in bamboo silk, and we call them bamboo silk. It appears by name in the collections that use it — ELEGANCE, KASHMIR-BLAZED and AVIO (AVIO woven entirely in bamboo silk) — never disguised as mulberry silk, never priced as it.
Bamboo silk is a viscose — a plant-based regenerated cellulose. It is a legitimate, more affordable fibre with a beautiful shine, when you know that is what you are buying. The dishonesty in this industry is the relabelling, not the fibre.
You can verify any "silk" rug yourself with a burn test in ten seconds (method at the bottom of this page).

What viscose actually is — and what "bamboo silk" means

Viscose is cellulose — usually from wood pulp or bamboo — chemically dissolved and re-extruded as a thread. The industry calls it regenerated cellulose. In rug showrooms you will see it under trade names including art silk, banana silk, bamboo silk, sari silk, mercerised viscose, and the most cynical of all, silk-look.

"Bamboo silk" is one of those names. It is a viscose made from bamboo pulp — a real, usable fibre with a high, soft lustre, not a natural animal silk. There is nothing wrong with choosing it on purpose. There is everything wrong with paying mulberry-silk money for it without being told.

How natural silk and bamboo silk behave differently

The two fibres are suited to different rugs, and the honest thing is to tell you which is which so you can choose with your eyes open.

Natural mulberry silk gains a deeper sheen with use, holds its dye for generations, and survives professional cleaning without losing structure. It is the fibre that, with wool, has been the floor of high-end rug-making for a thousand years. It is also the more expensive of the two by a wide margin — which is exactly why it gets faked.

Bamboo silk (viscose) gives a softer, brighter lustre at a fraction of the cost, which is why we weave it in ELEGANCE, KASHMIR-BLAZED, and AVIO — the last woven entirely in bamboo silk. It also asks for gentler care: cellulose loses roughly half its tensile strength when wet, so a bamboo-silk piece belongs in a low-traffic, low-spill setting and should only ever be cleaned by a specialist who knows the fibre. We tell every client this before they buy.

Why the lie happens at the luxury end

The dangerous substitution happens most often in pieces priced between €15,000 and €60,000. That is the bracket where a client can be persuaded that "silk highlights" or a "silk field" justify the price, and where the margin on a viscose blend passed off as silk is largest.

The very low end of the market does not bother to claim silk at all. The absolute top, where clients fly in for atelier visits, cannot get away with it. The dangerous middle — where most luxury rug buyers actually shop — is precisely where the relabelling lives.

We sit in that bracket and refuse to play that game. Several of our clients came to us specifically because they were burned on a "silk" rug at this price point before.

How TVR labels its fibres

Every fibre in a TVR carpet is named for what it is. When a piece is woven in wool and natural mulberry silk, that is what the documentation says; when a collection is woven in wool and bamboo silk, the collection says bamboo silk.

We do not blend viscose into a wool field and call it "wool with silk highlights". We do not mix natural silk and viscose into the same thread and sell the result as silk. The mulberry silk we do use is hand-spun and dyed in the same Swiss-chemical-dye process described on the craftsmanship page — the hand-spin irregularity gives it a soft, broken sheen, never the glassy factory shine of a pure viscose pile.

The burn test you can do yourself

You do not need a lab. A small thread snipped from the underside of a fringe is enough.

Natural silk burns like singed hair, leaves a small brittle black bead, and smells of burnt protein.

Viscose — including bamboo silk — burns like paper, leaves a soft grey ash, and smells of wood smoke.

If a seller refuses to let you snip a tiny test thread from a rug you are about to buy at a silk price, treat that refusal as the answer.

What to ask any dealer before you sign

Four questions. They separate honest sellers from polished ones:

"What is the fibre composition by weight?" A real answer is specific. "It's silk" is not specific.
"Is the silk natural mulberry silk, or a viscose such as bamboo silk?" Force the words. Both are fine to sell; only one is fine to hide.
"Can I burn-test a strand from the underside?" If yes, you have nothing to worry about. If no, you do.
"How should this rug be cleaned, and how will it behave after professional steam cleaning?" A natural-silk piece is fine. A viscose piece needs to be handled as a viscose piece — and the seller should say so.

A TVR carpet answers all four plainly, whichever fibre it is woven in.

In short

When a TVR carpet is sold as natural silk, it is natural mulberry silk — never relabelled viscose.
We also weave in bamboo silk (a viscose) in ELEGANCE, KASHMIR-BLAZED and AVIO, named openly and priced accordingly.
The industry's dishonesty is passing viscose off as natural silk, most often at the €15k–€60k bracket — not the existence of bamboo silk.
A burn test settles which fibre you are holding in ten seconds.
For the standards behind every TVR carpet, see Craftsmanship. For the full material palette, see Materials.

Why we will never sell you viscose as silk