One of Val's many weaving projects in progress on her Schacht 8 harness loom

Randy dyeing Tussah silk with indigo for another Valerie weaving project

Randy & Valerie Hyde are the owners of Renaissance Rug Cleaning. Randy grew up in Clackamas and Valerie in SE Portland. Ironically, as a child, Randy would often walk past Val's grandparents' home where Valerie spent much of her summers at "grandpa's little farm." It wasn't until years later the two would meet while working for Atiyeh Brothers in the early 1990s. Both developed a love for woven textiles, Tribal rugs, Persian carpets, and the cultures and artistry that creates them. In 1996 Randy accepted a position with tribal rug expert and author James Opie at James Opie Oriental Rugs, working in the retail, cleaning, and wholesale importation of rugs. In 1999 Randy founded Renaissance Rug Cleaning Inc. Since its creation Renaissance has been a specialty workshop devoted to the cleaning & restoration of oriental rugs and carpets. Today, Renaissance is one of a small number of oriental rug specific facilities that specialize in just rug cleaning in the country and the only one in Oregon and SW Washington. Randy & Val have two teenage children Alex and Kate that keep them busy in their free time. Val is a weaver; when she's not busy repairing rugs she can often be found felting & weaving blankets, scarfs, shoes all manner of things at home. Randy has an interest in natural dyes and often dyes wool for Valerie's projects. He likes to Homebrew beer and cider and gardens harvesting 140pounds of Roma and San Marzano tomatoes from his garden recently.

From 2016 -18 Randy served as the president of ARCS (Association of Rug Care Specialists), a rug cleaning trade association dedicated to science, training, integrity, and professionalism in the oriental and area rug cleaning trade. Randy has also traveled to Turkey and Iran visiting rug weaving and restoration facilities. Recently, in late 2020 Randy spent a month in Afghanistan consulting with rug producers in Afghanistan to improve rug weaving.

ABOUT THE OWNERS

Why the name Renaissance?

For several reasons and no, the Renaissance fair is not one of them. Back in the 1980's a few bold and intrepid rug dealers & collectors asked a seemingly simple question, Why don't new rugs have the qualities that antique rug have, that makes antique rugs so attractive? The exploration of this question led some of these forward or is it backward thinking rug people to turn back time, to make rugs the old way. Hand spinning wool from heirloom breeds of sheep and use of natural dyes not used in modern commercial rug production 50+ years and even letting weavers design their own rugs. This in a time when the rug world was full of machine spun, synthetically dyed and programmed designed rugs. By doing this company such as Tufenkian, Woven legends, Asia Minor, Michaelian & Kohlberg, Zollanvari, Miri and others took rug making back nearly a century. Making rugs with depth, quality and old world integrity that hadn't been seen in large-scale since the 1930's. In the trade, we referred to this movement as a "RENAISSANCE" in rug weaving. In 1999 when I started Renaissance Rug Cleaning Inc. few people were truly cleaning rugs. Most were only surface cleaning with shampoo or hot water extracted or haphazardly run through machines leaving rugs dirty, distorted pile and sometimes resulting in damage and color run. It seemed only natural that the RENAISSANCE in rug weaving should lead to a RENAISSANCE in RUG CLEANING. Today, Renaissance Rug Cleaning Inc. is dedicated to the cleaning and restoration of oriental rugs the old way by hand.