Multicolor Anatolian Handwoven Wool Kozak Cicim Kilim

At 171 × 231 cm (5'7" × 7'7") this is a room-sized flatweave, which is unusual for brocaded work — the technique is slow enough that most pieces stop well short of four square meters. Handwoven in wool on the Kozak plateau above Bergama, in İzmir province, in the full Anatolian palette.

01Knot by knot, by hand

A single piece. Kozak is pine forest and granite, a plateau standing above the Aegean coastal plain, and the weaving is done in the villages up there. Color arrives in blocks. A field of one tone gives way to a band of another with no blending at the join, and brocaded figures ride over the top in third and fourth colors, which is why a piece like this photographs busier than it looks on a floor.

02From ground to pile

Standing on it, the eye sorts the bands out at once. Wool throughout. Four square meters of brocade is heavy — heavier than a plain kilim the same size, since every raised figure adds yarn the ground weave would not otherwise carry — and that weight is what keeps a flatweave this large lying flat without help. It is also the practical warning.

03Coming off the loom

This is not a piece to move around casually, and not one for a room where chairs get dragged, because a chair leg catches a raised figure long before it would catch knotted pile. Handwoven in wool on the Kozak plateau, Bergama, İzmir province. 171 × 231 cm (5'7" × 7'7") — around four square meters. Cicim brocading over a flat kilim ground, in the full Anatolian palette. Color arrives in blocks, unblended at the joins. Heavy for a flatweave, and it lies flat without an underlay. Raised figures catch on dragged chair legs. Washing by a flatweave specialist. One of one. Most cicim ends up as a cushion or a hanging because the technique rarely gets this far, and a floor-sized one is the rarer object by some distance.