Multicolor Anatolian Handwoven Wool Kilim from Mut

Mut is a district inland from Mersin, in the mountains above the southern coast, and its kilims are village work rather than workshop work. This one is handwoven in wool, multicolor, drawn with Anatolian motifs, and it measures 88 × 129 cm (2'11" × 4'3"). The house lists it as an older piece and as one of its rare items. Nothing on a kilim is knotted. Weft is compacted onto the warp until fabric and drawing are the same thing, which means the design appears on both faces and the textile stays thin, light and reversible.

01Knot by knot, by hand

It also means every color change is a structural event — the weaver has to stop one weft and start another, and a vertical boundary between two colors leaves a short slit at the join. Those slits are how you tell a real kilim from a printed imitation of one at a glance. Wool throughout, in the tones a village dye pot produces rather than a matched palette.

02Color that shifts through the day

On a piece of this age the colors have already done their settling, so the reds, greens and blues settle against each other in a way that new dyeing cannot imitate. It shows use, as a flatweave with no pile to hide behind always will.

03Coming off the loom

Professional washing, and no domestic machine at any temperature. Handwoven wool kilim from Mut, in the mountains inland from Mersin. Flatweave: no pile, reversible, the pattern built into the cloth. Multicolor Anatolian village drawing. 88 × 129 cm (2'11" × 4'3"). Small vertical slits at the color joins — the mark of true kilim weaving. An older piece; the colors have settled with time. Wear is visible, as it must be on a textile without pile. Professional washing only.

04From the hand of the weaver

Listed among the house's rare pieces. It was woven for a house in the hills where it would have been a floor, a wall and a door in turn, and it is still small enough to be any of them.