Palace replicas are a cross-continental labor of love

In the sterile, dust-free attic of Iolani Palace, where archives and various old objects are studied and restored, a brand-new beauty lay rolled up in period guise. Handwoven in Nepal, designed in Vermont, researched in Hawaii, Delaware and Massachusetts and based on 19th-century English patterns, the replica carpet for Queen Kapiolani’s bedroom, along with a second replica for King Kalakaua’s bedroom, will provide vibrant color to palace floors that have lain bare for more than 100 years.

The rugs, which will be unveiled to the public Wednesday, culminate a nine-year project funded by the Friends of Iolani Palace and two of its biggest supporters, Olivia De Jane and the Dolores Furtado Martin Foundation.

Despite a wealth of detailed renderings made through computer graphic design, a lot of brick-and-mortar guesswork and trial-and-error was involved.

With the exception of a thin scatter rug in the queen’s room, the royal bedrooms lacked floor coverings since the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, when most of the palace furnishings were given to the Bishop Museum or state archives or sold at a series of auctions.

Without a thread, much less a scrap, of the English originals to go by, the new but authentic-looking carpets had to be re-created from scratch based on glimpses in faded black-and-white photographs, visits to mainland museums to view collections of period English carpets and descriptions in documents such as Hawaii newspapers of the time.

"We know that Queen Kapiolani loved roses, and her room was described in a newspaper as ‘crimson iced in white lace,’ which helped a lot," said Heather Diamond, the palace curator.

In their attic workshop, Diamond and Megan Ramsey, the collections manager, crouched at opposite ends of the rug and slowly, gently unrolled it. They revealed a delightful study of roses and leaves in pinks, crimson, burgundy, gold and green — more sweet and feminine than pomp and circumstance. The pattern, while stylized, captured the free, rambling look of an English garden. "They look like big fat cottage roses to me," Diamond said.

Measuring 7 by 9 feet and woven all in one piece, the rug looked smaller than one would have expected, which added to its intimate, unpretentious charm.

Perhaps the biggest challenge in creating both rugs was deciding on their colors, Diamond said. The curatorial team went through bags full of different-colored yarns bundled into cylinders, known as color poms, sent by a textile historian in Delaware. But many of these, along with patterned 2-foot-square carpet tiles known as hand trial samples, were rejected after the colors were viewed in the light of the second-floor bedrooms.

And it was back to the drawing — and dyeing — board.

Luckily, the royal bedroom carpets were the last elements in a project to re-create authentic-looking textiles. Similar painstaking research had resulted in bedroom draperies and upholstery whose color informed the basic shade of the rugs — crimson for the queen’s and peacock blue, a light mix of sky and teal, for the king’s, matching an original vase in his bedroom. The king’s rug measured 15 by 19 feet and matched the lighthearted English country style of the queen’s rug. Both rugs should considerably brighten the bedrooms, kept shuttered to protect the textiles and furnishings from the ultraviolet sunlight.

The dyeing of the Tibetan wool yarn and the weaving of the rugs in Nepal were overseen by the Vermont Custom Rug Co., a specialist in re-creating historic carpeting. The owners made frequent trips to Nepal as the carpets were being woven by hand on traditional looms at the rate of 1 to 1.5 inches per day. The finished rugs were washed and their pile trimmed by hand to give a soft chenille surface.

"We’re hoping that our weavers are all safe," said Diamond, referring to the catastrophic earthquake in Nepal. "We received photographs of them throughout the process and felt as if we’d come to know them. We’ve been asking but haven’t heard anything."

ASKED WHETHER there were any photos of King Kalakaua, Queen Kapiolani or Queen Liliu­oka­lani with bare feet resting on the original rugs, Diamond shook her head. "They only took formal photographs in those days," she said.

Although Diamond described her three-woman curatorial team as "the don’t touch anything people," a brief sample stroking was permitted during the preview. The Tibetan wool pile was soft but pleasantly coarse, reminiscent of a natural-fiber foot bed in a massage sandal. One could imagine Hawaii’s last king and queens walking barefoot in their bedrooms, taking comfort from the bright warm rugs.

The process of re-creation was painstaking and cost more than $35,000. But if long-dead carpets could be cloned, the result would fall short of history, which is a continuous process of scholarship and interpretation. Instead, the royal carpets and other textiles give palace visitors the chance to learn about the cross-continental labor of love that produced them.