Orange Star-Motif Handwoven Wool Cicim Kilim

Fethiye sits on the Mediterranean coast of Muğla province, and what comes off its village looms is cicim — a flatweave with the motifs laid in afterward, thread by thread, over the woven ground.

01How it feels underfoot

This one is orange, wool throughout, 127 × 176 cm (4'2" × 5'9"), carrying rows of stars, and there is a single example of it. Cicim is worth explaining, because the word does not translate. A kilim is built from weft alone: the pattern is the structure.

02Up close to the pattern

In cicim the ground is woven first and the figures are then wrapped in with an extra yarn that floats over the surface, so the motifs sit slightly proud and you can feel them with a hand. Here the stars run in loose ranks across an orange field, dark reds and blue-greens among them, and none of the ranks quite line up with the next. The color is kök boya — dye taken from roots and other plant matter rather than a chemical bath.

03Color, by the light

Plant dye behaves differently from the start: it never quite saturates, and it fades in a warm direction, so a naturally dyed orange goes toward apricot with age while a synthetic one goes gray.

04Comes from from Anatolia

The wool is Anatolian and the whole thing was made by hand in Türkiye. One warning, plainly: brocaded motifs sit on the surface, so a spike heel or a dog's claw can pull a float loose. It is not a rug for a busy corridor. Handwoven in Türkiye, in the cicim technique of the Fethiye villages. Wool ground and wool motifs, brocaded rather than knotted. Orange field with ranks of star figures in dark red and blue-green. Dyed with root and plant dyes, which age toward warmth rather than gray. 127 × 176 cm (4'2" × 5'9") — a bedside, an entryway, a wall. The wrapped motifs stand above the ground and can be snagged. Washing is a job for a specialist, not a domestic machine. One kilim; the arrangement of the stars will not recur. What is a cicim kilim? Cicim is a flatweave in which the ground is woven first and the motifs are added with a supplementary yarn wrapped over the surface.

05The mark of slow weaving

The figures stand slightly proud of the weave and can be felt by hand, which is what separates cicim from a plain kilim, where the pattern and the structure are the same thing. How can I tell root-dyed wool from chemically dyed wool? By how it ages.

06After the color

Root and plant dyes rarely reach full saturation and they lose color in a warm direction, so an old naturally dyed orange drifts toward apricot. Synthetic dye holds its strength longer and then goes flat and grayish, and it seldom shows the tone bands left by small dye lots. Hung on a plain wall it reads as a piece of drawing; on the floor it will slowly lose the last of its sharpness, which is the better ending of the two.