Multicolor Handwoven Wool Antalya Cicim Kilim

It looks embroidered and it is not. This is cicim, a flatweave in which a second decorative weft is threaded in while the ground is still being built, so the figures end up standing on the surface instead of lying in it.

01Coming off the loom

Handwoven in wool in Antalya, multicolored, 163 × 300 cm (5'4" × 9'10"). One piece. The difference shows when you turn the piece over. Ordinary kilim is made by the ground weft alone and is the same on both faces, whereas a cicim's supplementary threads are laid in from the front, so the back shows the structure while the front shows the ornament — readable from either side, but not identical. The raised figures also catch light along their edges and cast a small shadow, which is why the same dyes look stronger in cicim than they do in a plain flatweave. Antalya sits on the Mediterranean coast at the southern end of the Anatolian weaving belt.

02From the hand of the weaver

The house records this as an older weaving and holds it among its rare pieces, which says something about supply and nothing about quality: cicim at this size arrives one at a time. Two practical points — the raised threads are the part that wears first, so a cicim belongs where feet pass rather than where a chair leg pivots, and a flatweave has nothing in it to soak up a spill. Handwoven in wool in Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast of Türkiye. Cicim: a supplementary weft laid in during weaving, so the figures sit raised. Ornament on the front, structure on the back — legible from both, but not the same. Multicolored, in Anatolian drawing. 163 × 300 cm (5'4" × 9'10") for a long sitting room, a hall, or a wide kitchen floor. An older weaving, and one of the house's rare pieces. Raised threads wear first; keep chair legs off them. Have it washed by somebody who washes kilims. Cicim was what a household did when it had time and dyed wool to spare, and there is no industrial version of that.