Multicolor Anatolian Handwoven Wool Cicim Kilim, Mut Yörük

Mut lies in the Taurus foothills behind Mersin, and the Yörük families who summered above it wove for their own households rather than for a market. This is one of those weavings: a handwoven wool cicim kilim, 103 × 141 cm (3'5" × 4'8"), multicolored, made in Türkiye.

01Color, by the light

Cicim means the motifs are carried on top of the ground weave instead of being part of it. The drawing is Anatolian and built from repeats small enough to be held in memory — hooked diamonds, stepped edges, running guard stripes — in colors used at full strength and never blended.

02The origin of the pattern

Because the motif threads sit above the ground, the pattern stands in slight relief, and you can find it with your fingers in the dark. Follow one row along and the same motif will not come out exactly the same width twice. Wool throughout, woven flat on a village loom, with the cicim threads wrapped in as the weaving advanced rather than embroidered on afterward.

03The mark of slow weaving

That distinction is the whole of the technique, and it is why the back of a cicim looks like weaving instead of like sewing. A piece this size was a domestic object — a cover, a cushion face, a mat inside a door. It is thin, so it wants grip beneath it on a hard floor, and its edges are no longer perfectly straight. How is cicim different from embroidery? Cicim is worked on the loom. The extra threads that form the motif are wrapped around the warp as the weaving goes forward, so the design is structural.

Embroidery is added with a needle to finished cloth. On a cicim the reverse still looks woven, which is the quickest way to tell them apart. What is a Yörük weaving? Yörük is the name for the Turkish pastoral communities who moved between winter and summer pasture in Anatolia.

04From the hand of the weaver

Their weavings were made for household use on portable looms, which is why the pieces are small, the wool comes from flocks nearby, and the motifs repeat forms carried in memory rather than copied from a drawing. Handwoven in wool by Yörük weavers around Mut, inland from Mersin. Cicim technique: motif threads carried over the flat ground, standing in relief. 103 × 141 cm (3'5" × 4'8"), about a square meter and a half. Anatolian repeats in unblended colors, varying slightly row to row. Flat and thin; put grip underneath it on a smooth floor. Edges are unruled and the weave wanders — village work, not workshop work. Professional washing by a kilim cleaner. One piece; nothing else will match it. Weavings made for a household rather than for a buyer tend to be the ones still worth looking at fifty years later.