Multicolor Anatolian Handwoven Wool Kilim Cushion Cover

This is a rug that ended up on a sofa: a handwoven Anatolian kilim made up as a cushion cover, 30 × 50 cm (1'0" × 1'8"), wool on cotton, woven in Türkiye. Kilim is weft-faced and carries no pile, so the drawing comes out as sharp on the back of the woven cloth as on the front.

Anatolian kilim motifs are a working vocabulary rather than decoration — elibelinde, the hands-on-hips figure; koçboynuzu, the ram's horn; the hooks and stepped diamonds that a slit-weave technique can produce and a curve cannot. On 30 by 50 centimeters there is room for two or three of them, which is why kilim cushions read so strongly: the drawing stays at the scale it would have on a floor, in a tenth of the area.

Wool for the weft that makes the picture, cotton for the warp it is packed onto. That is the standard kilim construction, and it is the reason a kilim can be thin and strong at once. This is a cover, so the pad is separate. Wool takes dye deeply and holds it, but a wool cover on a sofa that is used every evening will felt slightly at the corners over the years, because that is what wool does under pressure. Professional cleaning rather than a washing machine.

• Handwoven kilim in Türkiye — weft-faced, flat, with no pile.
• Wool weft on a cotton warp.
• Anatolian motif drawing in several colors.
• 30 × 50 cm (1'0" × 1'8"), a lumbar cushion size.
• Cover only; the insert is separate.
• The corners will soften and felt slightly with years of use.
• Professional cleaning, not a domestic machine.
• One cover.

It is the smallest piece of hand weaving in the catalog, and the one people keep after the sofa has been replaced.