Multicolor Anatolian Handwoven Wool Sivrihisar Kilim

Sivrihisar is a town in Eskişehir province in western central Anatolia, and its name — pointed fortress — comes from the rocks standing above it. This is one of its kilims: handwoven in wool, multicolored, 152 × 350 cm (5'0" × 11'6"), and old enough that the house keeps it with the rare stock.

01Coming off the loom

One piece, and a large one. Three and a half meters of flatweave is a room-sized kilim, and room-sized kilims were never woven casually — a loom that wide takes two weavers working across from one another, and the drawing has to be agreed before the first row goes down. What comes off it is a floor covering with the weight of a rug and the thinness of a cloth. The color runs multi throughout rather than settling into a single ground, which is characteristic of the older Anatolian pieces, where whatever wool had been dyed went into the work. Wool, handwoven, and worn the way a used kilim is worn: the pile that a knotted rug has to lose is not there to begin with, so age shows in the softening of the weave and the settling of the color rather than in bare patches.

Halıcızade lists it among the rare pieces. Trade age words are loose — antique means a hundred years and up, semi-antique fifty to a hundred, vintage twenty to eighty, and no authority anywhere issues a certificate for any of them.

02At the loom in in Anatolia

What is certain is that nobody is weaving this size by hand in these numbers again. It needs a professional wash and a flat floor. Handwoven wool kilim from Sivrihisar, Eskişehir province, Türkiye. 152 × 350 cm (5'0" × 11'6") — a sitting room, a long landing, or a wide hall. Multicolored throughout, in the older Anatolian manner. Flat-woven: no pile, and both faces usable. It sits in the house's rare and older stock. Age terms in the trade carry no issuing authority behind them. Professional washing. Kilims this size used to be ordinary, which is the only reason one this good can still be found.