Wigan company cleans most expensive item to date

Gerrards Carpet and Upholstery Cleaners in Standish were asked to clean the Barbara Broekman, which is a 300 sq ft tapestry on RMS Queen Mary two cruise ship.

The piece was commissioned by Cunard and spans the full two decks of the Britannia Restaurant.

It allegedly costs more than £100,000 and hadn’t been cleaned for 11 years.

It’s the first item that has ever required scaffolding for them to reach.

Owner Simon Gerrard said: “We’ve worked for P&O Cruises and Cunard for 30 years in total.

"When P&O bought Cunard we started working on their ships as well as the P&O ones.

"We’re very used to Queen Mary two because we’ve worked on it many times throughout the year.

"This tapestry job because of a refit in Germany and it was the first time it had ever been cleaned.

"Obviously they wanted us to do it because we were familiar with the ship.

"Fortunately because we were on there quite regularly we got a chance to go and look at it.”

The tapestry took four days to clean and was split into sections so the piece wouldn’t rip or sag due to the water.

A full day was spent brushing and dry vacuuming it to remove as much loose soil as possible, to reduce the amount of cleaning that was needed.

Simon added: “We had to check the fibres and whether the dye would be stable if we cleaned it and how strong the fixings are.

"The problem with cleaning a wool tapestry is that wool will absorb its own weight in water.

"You can double the weight of it if you clean it all in one go.

"It was cleaned in four sections over four days, so we’d clean one quarter then dry it.

"It was an absolute one-off, I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t have the opportunity to test it beforehand

"There was three of us cleaning it because we were doing other jobs on the ship because of this refit.

"It came out beautifully.

"When it was cleaned it was covered in protective film until it go back to Southampton.”