Multicolor Anatolian Handwoven Wool Kilim, Sivrihisar

Sivrihisar kilims carry a registered geographical indication, which ties the name in law to the district that makes them. This is one: handwoven wool, 183 × 391 cm (6'0" × 12'10"), multicolored, worked in traditional Anatolian motifs, and forty to fifty years old. Orange leads, and red, green and cream answer it in bands and blocks that were never blended into a scheme — that is what the Turkish word rengarenk describes and what the kilim actually looks like.

01Knot by knot, by hand

The motifs are the deep Anatolian ones, shapes that carry meaning in village weaving rather than serving as decoration, and they were set down by a weaver who knew them by heart. Nothing on this piece was worked from a paper cartoon, and the drawing wanders a little along its rows because of it. It was woven in a village, by hand, entirely in wool, and it has spent four or five decades since.

02A line from the archive

That age puts it in what the trade calls vintage — twenty to eighty years, a usage with no issuing authority behind it, unlike the geographical indication on its name. A long narrow piece like this suited a room shape common then, when a floor was laid with two or three kilims rather than one.

03The rule of care

Anything of this age wants professional washing and nothing improvised. What does a geographical indication mean on a kilim? It is a legal registration binding a product name to the place that produces it, in the way Champagne is bound to Champagne.

04Up close to the pattern

A Sivrihisar kilim registered this way has to be woven in that district to carry the name at all. Handwoven in the Sivrihisar district, whose kilims hold a registered geographical indication. Wool throughout, flat-woven, with no pile. Forty to fifty years old — vintage by trade usage, which no authority issues. Orange-led multicolored bands carrying traditional Anatolian motifs. Worked from memory rather than from a drawing, so the motifs shift slightly along their rows. 183 × 391 cm (6'0" × 12'10"): long and narrow, made for a corridor or a floor laid with more than one piece. Professional washing. Forty years of use are already inside it, which is the reason it will take forty more without changing much.