Navy Anatolian Taşpınar Village-Woven Wool Rug Pillow

Taşpınar is a village in Aksaray province, in central Anatolia, and a rug-weaving name in its own right. This pillow carries a hand-knotted Taşpınar rug face in wool — navy, with the angular Anatolian drawing that village looms work in — and it measures 52 × 120 cm (1'8" × 3'11"). Village weaving describes where the loom stood rather than a technique. The loom stood in a room of the house and was worked in the gaps left by everything else, and the motifs came out of memory rather than off a paper cartoon.

01The origin of the pattern

That is why figures on a piece like this drift a little from row to row, and why the drift is the thing collectors look for first. The house lists it among its rare pieces and its older stock, and it is not a design that will be woven again to order. At 52 × 120 cm this is a long bolster rather than a square cushion — the shape that goes across the head of a bed or along the back of a bench, where a square one would look lost.

02Color that shifts through the day

Navy on a wool village weave is rarely one flat color: it moves between blue and near-black depending on which way the pile lies and where the light is coming from. Professional cleaning, and a piece of this age is no candidate for a washing machine. Carries a hand-knotted wool rug face, village-woven at Taşpınar in Aksaray, Türkiye. Is drawn in the angular Anatolian manner, with the small irregularities of memory weaving. Measures 52 × 120 cm — a long bolster rather than a square cushion. Shows navy that shifts between blue and near-black with the direction of the pile. Comes from the house's rare and older stock, and will not be repeated. Needs professional cleaning. Wool that has already had a life on a floor makes a better cushion than new wool does, because the hard part of its life is already behind it.