Red Handwoven Wool Village Cushion from Kırşehir

Kırşehir, on the central Anatolian plateau, is where this came from, and village weaving there has kept the same red grounds and angular drawing for generations. The piece is a handwoven wool cushion measuring 55 × 114 cm (1'10" × 3'9"), wool over cotton, one of the rare items in the house catalog. Village looms are narrow and the drawing follows from that.

01Knot by knot, by hand

A weaver working without a cartoon carries the motif in memory and repeats it by counting, so the shapes come out angular, slightly uneven in spacing, and unmistakably made by counting rather than by tracing.

02What the yarn is

On a piece this narrow the counting is visible: the motif runs to the edge and stops where the cloth stops, which is how these were always made. The face is wool and the structure behind it is cotton.

03Choosing the size

Two of these came into the house together and this is the narrower and longer of the two, close enough in size to be confusing on a screen and quite different on a bench. It is not a filled cushion in the ordinary sense — it has the weight and stiffness of a rug, and it wants a rug washer rather than a laundry. Handwoven in Türkiye — wool face, cotton foundation. Red-ground Anatolian motifs in the Kırşehir village idiom. 55 × 114 cm (1'10" × 3'9"), narrow and long. Drawn from memory by counting, so spacing varies across the piece. Motifs run off the edge rather than resolving into a frame. Stiffer and heavier than a conventional cushion. Cleaned as a rug, by a professional. Rare listing; one piece. What survives on something this small is the grammar of a weaving tradition rather than a design, which is the more interesting half of it.