Multicolor Handwoven Wool Eşme Village Kilim

There is no pile on this piece at all. The pattern is the weave itself — colored weft passing over and under the warp — and it reads on both faces. Handwoven in wool at Eşme, a district of Uşak in western Türkiye, multicolored, 115 × 178 cm (3'9" × 5'10").

01Knot by knot, by hand

The house keeps it with its older stock. Nothing in the palette was chosen to agree with anything else, which is what people are reaching for when they call a kilim ethnic, and is really just what a household weaver did with the yarn within arm's reach.

02A line from the archive

Bands of color stack up the length of the piece with narrow figured rows between them, and where two dye lots meet the shade changes without ceremony. Nobody went back and fixed it. Fixing it would have produced a worse kilim. Wool end to end, woven flat on a domestic loom rather than a workshop's, and old enough that it sits among the house's rare pieces instead of its repeatable designs.

03Coming off the loom

A flatweave has one habit worth knowing in advance: it is thin, so it travels across a polished floor unless something grips underneath it. It also has an advantage nothing with a pile can offer — when one face has taken enough light, you turn it over and start again. It goes to a specialist for washing. Made by hand at Eşme, in the Uşak district of western Türkiye. Wool from end to end, flat, and no pile on either face. Stacked color bands with narrow figured rows between them. Dye lots change mid-piece and were left as they fell. 115 × 178 cm (3'9" × 5'10") — an entry, a kitchen, beside a bed. Reversible; needs grip beneath it on a hard floor. Specialist washing. An older weaving, one of one. It was made to be used before it was ever made to be sold, and it still carries itself that way.