Red Hand-Knotted Wool Selendi Prayer Rug

One end carries the mihrab niche and the other does not, so everything between them is drawn to be read from a single direction — which is what seccade means, and why the shape is always nearer a door than a square.

01After the color

This one is knotted in red wool on cotton at Selendi, in Manisa province, western Türkiye, at 113 × 167 cm (3'8" × 5'6"). Red fills the niche and the field around it, deep enough that the drawing inside has to be worked in cream and dark blue to be seen at all.

02From the hand of the weaver

Above the arch sit the small filler motifs that Anatolian weavers put there almost without exception — a lamp form, a comb, sometimes a pair of ewers — and the spandrels at the shoulders are filled with a different figure again, so the top third of the rug carries more incident than the rest of it. Wool pile on cotton warps, knotted by hand in a village rather than a workshop, and old enough that the house holds it among its rare pieces.

03Which furniture, which room

The directional composition is the practical catch: laid as a floor rug it only looks right from one end of the room, and a sofa placed across the niche will make it look wrong from every seat.

04The rule of care

Cleaning is professional work. Can a prayer rug be used as an ordinary floor rug? Yes, and many are. The only thing to plan for is the direction: a seccade composition has a top and a bottom, so it reads correctly from one end of a room and upside down from the other. Orient it toward the seating rather than across it. What is the niche at one end of the rug? It is a mihrab, the arched form that marks the direction of prayer in a mosque wall, reproduced in miniature on the rug.

05The mark of slow weaving

On a village prayer rug the arch is drawn in steps rather than as a curve, because a knotted pile builds shapes out of squares. Hand-knotted at Selendi, Manisa province, western Türkiye. Pile of wool, carried on cotton warps. Red ground with a stepped mihrab niche, drawn in cream and dark blue. Filler motifs above the arch and figured spandrels at the shoulders. 113 × 167 cm (3'8" × 5'6") — the standard single prayer size. Directional: it reads from one end of the room only. Professional cleaning. An older village weaving, one of one. Plenty of these end up on a wall rather than a floor, where nobody has to walk on the niche and the drawing gets read the way it was set out.