Multicolor Cicim Handwoven Wool Yörük Saddlebag

In the trade, a sandık eskisi is an older piece that spent its years folded in a chest and was never put to use; some dealers call it a sandık yenisi, a chest-new piece, for exactly that reason.

01Coming off the loom

This heybe is one of them: wool throughout, handwoven in Türkiye. A heybe is a saddlebag, two pouches joined by a center panel, meant to be slung over a shoulder or across the back of a pack animal. The pouches sit at either end; the striped middle is the part that rides on the shoulder. The pouch faces are worked in cicim, where extra yarn is laid over the flatwoven ground during weaving so the motifs stand slightly raised. Each pouch carries nested diamonds on a dark brown ground, outlined in white hooks, with orange zigzags and small turquoise and yellow figures between them.

02From the hand of the weaver

In Anatolian weaving literature the hook is associated with warding off the evil eye. The center panel has no motifs at all, just orange, turquoise and dark brown stripes, with the opening of the bag cut through the middle. Laid flat it measures 50 × 133 cm (1'8" × 4'4"), about 0.7 square meters, a length better suited to hanging than to the floor. Draped over a stair rail or the back of a bench, the two pouches fall to either side and both faces show.

03Color, by the light

The dark brown ground sits comfortably against walnut; orange and turquoise are near-complements, so a lime-white wall lets each of them read on its own. The dark brown ends are plain stripes; the pattern lives only on the faces of the pouches.