Multicolor Handwoven Wool Konya Nuzumla Kilim Runner

At 91 × 190 cm (3'0" × 6'3") this is a runner, and it was woven as one — a handwoven wool village kilim from Nuzumla in the Konya region, colored with root dyes, multicolored, with no second piece behind it. Flatweave: no pile, patterned on both faces, thin enough to lie under a door. Village kilims were woven to the loom a household owned, and a narrow loom produced narrow cloth, which is how so much Anatolian flatweave ended up in corridor proportions.

01From the hand of the weaver

Root dyeing was the ordinary practice before synthetic dyes reached the villages in the later nineteenth century, and it ages differently: color made from plant roots dulls toward its own hue rather than shifting away from it, so an old madder red goes rustier instead of turning pink. Wool throughout, spun and woven by hand. A flatweave of this weight is honest about what it lacks — there is no pile to absorb sound or liquid, and anything spilled goes straight through to the floor beneath.

Slip is the other consideration in a corridor, so it wants a pad. Expect the piece to be slightly out of true as well: a handwoven kilim is never quite rectangular, and forcing it flat under furniture is how the edges go. Handwoven in wool at Nuzumla, in the Konya region of Türkiye. Colored with root dyes rather than synthetics. Kilim flatweave, reversible in effect, with no pile. 91 × 190 cm (3'0" × 6'3") — runner proportions, for a hall or a galley kitchen. A flatweave absorbs nothing; a spill reaches the floor. Use a pad.

02Knot by knot, by hand

A light kilim slides. Slightly out of true, as hand looms make them. Washing goes to a professional. One piece, and the drawing does not repeat. Hallways usually get the rug nobody thought about, and this is the argument for thinking about it.