Turkish Rugs - West Anatolia

Bergama, Kula, Ghiordes and Melas are among a cluster of villages whose traditional carpets from the Classical era include large and small pattern Holbeins, carpets with double niches, and prayer rugs with the typical keyhole and arrowhead designs. Melas creates some of the most authentically Anatolian items produced in the region. The most popular and distinctive design is the tree-of-life in a very stylized form, and a geometric flowering diamond within a prayer rug. Melas prayer rugs have a recognizable arrowhead shape woven in warm colors. They have broad borders containing elegant, stylized floral and geometrical motifs. Colors are mainly pale umber, sienna gray, rust, ocher, and a greenish yellow that is unique to the area. Indian weavers are now copying Melas designs.

Bergama designs may be either Caucasian and resemble those from Kars, a major weaving center in the northeast of the country near the Russian border, or they be clasically Anatolian, such as those woven in Melas. In Kula and Ghiordes some traditional prayer rugs are still woven, but mostly rugs have floral designs, usually with a central medallion.

Ghiordes is the best known of Turkey's weaving centers, acclaimed for its better than average weaving, and it is the town that has given its name to the Turkish knot. It is renowned for its marvelous prayer rugs and double niche carpets. The area has recently introduced a broader range of Anatolian and Persian designs. Popular patterns that are woven here are naturalistic flowers, in the French style, introduced in the 1800's. Ghiordes carpets are easily recognizable because of the squat shape of the mihrab (niche) and the use of many borders.

*sourced from 'Carpet Style' by Marty Phillips

Dr. Khosrow Sobhe (Dr. Kay)
Certified Rug Specialist (CRS)
www.LosAngelesRugCleaning.com
www.RugIdea.com
Tel. 310-770-9085

Turkish Rugs - City Workshops

Old Turkish carpets were woven in reds and dark and light blues, with rows of repeated lozenges, eight pointed stars, and hooked octagons. Many were woven in Ushak, which until the 16th and 17th centuries was the principal center for the Ottoman aristocracy.

Carpet production is a relatively recent occurence in the Hereke area in western Turkey, where carpet weaving was first introduced during the mid-19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. It is now the source of some of Turkey's most sophisticated carpets, which are distinguished by their elegance and the use of the Senneh knot, and sometimes with gold threads in the weaving of silk carpets. The style was inspired by Persian and French designs, and many follow the designs, and many follow the designs coming out of Kerman and Tabriz, while others were influenced by the Savonnerie and Aubusson carpets. Traditional Persian designs include motifs such as cloudbands, palmettes, and other floral elements in a purely curvilinear style, often with a central medallion and wide borders.

The villages between the towns of Kayseri and Sivas in eastern Turkey produce short pile rugs in a very broad range of designs, from sophisticated, curvilinear patterns influenced by those of Tabriz and Isfahan in Persia and adapted by the local Armenian weavers, to much more geometric styles and prayer rugs. All these patterns are worked in the red, blue, or ivory grounds that are favored in the West. What the weavers produce is controlled nowadays by a central buying policy, so that, no matter whether the rugs are in silk or wool, they are among the finest woven today.

sourced from 'Carpet Style' by Barty Phillips

Dr. Khosrow Sobhe (Dr. Kay)
Certified Rug Specialist (CRS)
www.LosAngelesRugCleaning.com
www.RugIdea.com
Tel. 310-770-9085