Cream Handwoven Soumak Kilim in Wool and Silk

This one has been owned before, and the shop says so: a handwoven soumak kilim in cream, 117 × 184 cm (3'10" × 6'0"), worked in wool and cotton with silk through the motifs. Soumak is a wrapping technique rather than a plain flatweave, which is why the surface stands up in fine ridges. The drawing is the old authentic sort — hooks, stars and stepped panels set out in bands rather than gathered around one center, with the cream ground doing the work of holding them apart.

01What Wool does

Silk appears in the motifs alone and nowhere in the field, so the piece reads as a matt wool weaving with a few lines through it that catch light and shift as you cross the room. On a pale ground that contrast is far more visible than it would be on a dark one. Wool and cotton with silk, wrapped by hand.

02Knot by knot, by hand

A soumak takes considerably longer to make than a plain flatweave, since every pass has to be wound around the warp rather than thrown across it, and what comes off the loom has real weight and no pile at all.

03What the yarn is

This piece has had a previous life and should be read that way: a surface with no pile shows where it has been folded and where it has been walked, and the silk will have given up some of its first brightness.

04The mark of slow weaving

Silk in any proportion rules out a domestic wash. How is soumak different from a kilim? Both are flat weavings with no pile, but a kilim is made by passing the colored weft straight across the warp, while soumak winds each weft around the warp threads before moving on. The winding leaves a raised, ribbed face and a much heavier cloth, and it lets a weaver draw a finer line. What does previously owned mean on a kilim? It means the piece was in use in a household before it came here rather than arriving new from the loom.

05Coming off the loom

Expect the surface to carry fold marks and some evenness of wear, and expect the colors to sit a little quieter than they did when it was first made. Handwoven soumak; wool and cotton with silk in the motifs. Banded hooks, stars and stepped panels over a cream ground. 117 × 184 cm (3'10" × 6'0"). Ribbed, flat and heavy in the hand, with no pile. Previously owned, with the wear that implies. Specialist cleaning only, because of the silk. A single piece. A used weaving is the only kind that can show what the technique looks like after thirty years of somebody's feet, which is information a new one cannot give.