Turkish Rugs and Carpets
The oldest carpet knotted in the world was found in Siberia by a Russian archeologist in 1949. The carpet was frozen due to the water that was in the tomb and surprisingly it was perfectly preserved. This carpet was knotted by Turkish tribes at around 5th century BC up in the Pazirik Valley on the Altay Mountains. This carpet is presently displayed in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. The Pazirik carpet is of rare beauty and woven with great technical skill. It was found preserved in the frozen tombs of Scythian chiefs, which were 2400 to 2500 years old.
There 2 kinds of carpets woven in Turkey. The first is the well-known carpet while the other is the rug (kilim in Turkish). Kilim, a word of Turkish origin, denotes a pileless textile of many uses produced by one of several flatweaving techniques that have a common or closely related heritage and are practiced in the geographical area that includes parts of North Africa, the Balkans, Turkey (Anatolia and Thrace), the Caucasus, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia and China. Kilims are commonly known as Turkish rugs or Turkish carpets.
Turkish rugs are mostly made from either wool or silk, woven and knotted on a loom. The density of the knots on the carpet determines the quality of the carpet – the more knots per square centimeter, the more hardwearing it will be. The colors used for the designs vary from region to region and usually stem from the indigenous plants which were available in that region for producing dyes. The symbols used to decorate the carpets also vary and most have a meaning attached to them – usually they are motifs taken from nature representing flowers, plants and animals. Most carpet sellers are well informed about the history of the carpet and will be happy to spend some time explaining it to you – often over a glass of black tea. In recent years, a number of carpet schools have been opened where the traditional arts can be preserved and the process of carpet making from dying the wool to weaving can be demonstrated to visitors.
Silk Turkish carpets are usually much more expensive than traditional Turkish rugs made from either wool or cotton. Sometimes the warp and weft of these Turkish rugs are silk giving it a thing yarn as fewer strands are needed for the same length as silk fibres are longer than cotton. Sometimes silk is used in the knots of Turkish carpets to highlight special effects such as flowers.
Some Turkish carpet and rug stores that we can suggest are;
Oriental Turkish Rugs