Multicolor Handwoven Wool Oushak Village Kilim

Uşak, which English has always spelled Oushak, is a town in western Anatolia that has been weaving long enough to give its name to an entire family of design. This is the village end of it: a handwoven wool kilim, 117 × 167 cm (3'10" × 5'6"), multicolored, flat and reversible. Abroad the name belongs to large knotted rugs in soft madder and gold, and a kilim from the same district is a different animal — flatwoven, sharper in color, drawn in blocks because a flatweave has to be.

01The origin of the pattern

The field runs in bands, each carrying a row of figures against a different ground, and the palette is assembled the way village palettes are, out of whatever was dyed that season rather than to a scheme.

02The mark of slow weaving

It reads as a set of decisions taken one row at a time. Wool warp, wool weft, woven by hand and kept in a chest. Sandık eskisi is the Turkish shorthand for a weaving that spent its life folded away for visitors instead of being walked on, and the color is correspondingly strong for its age. Fold lines are the price of that.

03Where it sits in the house

A kilim this thin is not a hallway covering on its own; it goes over a larger rug, on a wall, across a table or over the end of a bed. Professional washing. Handwoven wool kilim from the Uşak (Oushak) district of western Anatolia. A banded multicolored field, drawn in blocks and steps. 117 × 167 cm (3'10" × 5'6"). Flatwoven and reversible, with no pile on either face. Chest-kept, so the color held and the creases came with it. Thin: better layered or hung than laid alone on a hard floor. Professional washing. A single piece. Oushak's knotted rugs have been shipped to Europe since the sixteenth century and are what the name is known for; the kilims stayed home in the chests, which is roughly why one is available now.