Multicolor Anatolian Handwoven Wool Sivrihisar Kilim

Three meters seventy long and a meter seventy-five across: a handwoven kilim from Sivrihisar, flat-woven in wool over a cotton warp and worked end to end in the Anatolian motif vocabulary, 175 × 370 cm (5'9" × 12'2").

01The mark of slow weaving

Sivrihisar is a district of Eskişehir, on the road between Ankara and the Aegean, and it has woven kilims for a very long time. One piece, and an old one. The proportion is the first thing to reckon with.

02Where it sits in the house

At six and a half square meters this is a large floor covering, but the length runs to more than double the width, and modern furniture is not laid out around that shape. It came out of a house where a room was dressed with two or three flatweaves laid parallel rather than one rectangle in the middle, and it still does that job better than any other.

03What Wool does

Down a long hall, or along one side of a room with the seating gathered on it, the proportion stops being awkward and becomes the reason to have it. Wool wefts beaten down over cotton warps. The cotton does the structural work — it takes the tension on the loom and holds the length straight over three and a half meters, which sheep's wool alone would not do at this span — and the wool carries every color you can see.

04Color, by the light

Colors here are set against one another at full strength, with no single dye put in charge of the rest. Halıcızade files it with the older and scarcer stock, so expect an edge that is not dead straight and a dye that has drifted.

05Knot by knot, by hand

Washing belongs to a kilim cleaner, not to a machine. Flat-woven by hand in Sivrihisar, a district of Eskişehir province in Türkiye. Wool wefts on a cotton warp — the cotton holds the length, the wool carries the color. 175 × 370 cm (5'9" × 12'2"), roughly six and a half square meters. Anatolian motifs across the full length, in strong unblended colors. Better along a hall or down one side of a room than centered under furniture. An older piece: slight waver at the edges, some drift in the dyes. Cleaning by a kilim specialist. One of one.

There is no second length of this. Kilims of this length stopped being made when rooms stopped being this shape, which is the whole reason to take one when it appears.