Red Anatolian Hand-Knotted Wool Village Pillow Cover, Konya İnlice

Sandık eskisi translates as old from the chest: a weaving completed, folded away into a dowry chest, and never put on a floor. This is one, made up as a pillow cover: hand-knotted red wool from İnlice, in Konya province, 57 × 107 cm (1'10" × 3'6"), with Anatolian figures across the face.

01Which tone on the ground

A single piece. The chest is the reason the color is where it is. A rug on a floor loses tone from the top of the pile downward, evenly and slowly; a rug in a chest loses almost none. What it gains instead are creases that were pressed in for years, and they need a few weeks lying flat before they let go.

02Knot by knot, by hand

What does not change is the depth of the red, which on village work of this age is usually the first thing to go and here has not. Knotted in wool, pile side out, and backed for use as a cushion. Village weaving of this kind was done on a narrow loom in a house, in figures the weaver had by heart, and that is why the two halves of the drawing do not quite mirror each other — count the motifs along one edge and then along the other.

03The mark of slow weaving

A piece made from an old weaving is not restockable in any sense. This cover exists because one particular rug was cut down, and when it goes there is nothing behind it. What does sandık eskisi mean? It is a Turkish trade term meaning old out of the chest. A weaving was finished and put away in a dowry chest instead of going down on a floor, so it comes out decades later carrying its color largely intact and showing fold lines from storage rather than wear from use. Will the fold lines come out? In most cases yes.

04From ground to pile

Wool has memory but not a long one, and creases from folded storage relax over a few weeks once the piece is laid flat under its own weight. A professional wash speeds it up and should be the only wet cleaning it gets. Knotted by hand in wool at İnlice, central Türkiye. 57 × 107 cm (1'10" × 3'6"), made up as a pillow cover. Sandık eskisi: kept in a dowry chest, not walked on. Deep red, held better than a floor piece of the same age would hold it. Fold lines from storage relax within a few weeks. The two halves of the drawing do not mirror exactly. Professional cleaning. One of one, and not repeatable. It was looked after for decades and never once used, which is the only reason a village weaving this old still looks like this.