Multicolor Anatolian Handwoven Wool Kilim, İnlice Konya

A handwoven wool kilim from İnlice, in Konya province, 114 × 185 cm (3'9" × 6'1"), multicolored, flat, and worked in the Anatolian repertoire — stepped diamonds, hooks and running borders, set in blocks of color that meet without blending.

01Color, by the light

Older village work, and there is one. The color is the first argument and the drawing is the second. Anatolian village weavers set strong tones against each other on purpose, and the device that makes it work rather than clash is the guard stripe: a narrow band, sometimes only two or three wefts deep, laid between two large fields to keep them from arguing. Count them on this piece and there are more than the drawing seems to need.

02Knot by knot, by hand

That is the difference between a weaver who was copying and one who had been doing it since childhood. All wool, front and back, made on a village loom in central Türkiye. İnlice is a small place, and its weaving was domestic — made for the house, and only later for anyone else. Age has done what age does to a flatweave: the ends soften first, the selvedges wear unevenly, and the whole thing lies flatter than a new kilim would.

03The mark of slow weaving

Have it cleaned by someone who knows flatweaves, and lay a pad beneath it, since a kilim on bare floor creeps. Handwoven in wool at İnlice, Konya province, in central Anatolia. 114 × 185 cm (3'9" × 6'1"), flat with no pile. Stepped diamonds, hooks and running borders in unblended blocks of color. Narrow guard stripes hold the large fields apart. Older domestic weaving, softened at the ends. Use a pad; a flatweave with nothing under it creeps. Cleaning by a flatweave specialist. One of one. Nothing in it was drawn on paper first, and that is the part you notice last and remember longest.