Multicolor Cicim Handwoven Wool Kilim

Cream fringe lines both short ends, and between them stripes of red, black, navy and cream run from one end of the kilim to the other. The kilim is built of crosswise bands. Between the thin stripes run wide bands worked in cicim, where small diamonds outlined in cream follow one another like links in a chain, each with a red, black or pink star at its center.

01At the loom in in Anatolia

The navy and lavender stripes leave a cool pause beside the red. Cicim is a technique of its own within Anatolian flatweaving: the ground is woven flat, and the pattern is worked in with a supplementary weft that floats over the warps.

02The origin of the pattern

That is why the motifs stand slightly raised. The star is one of the most frequently repeated geometric motifs in Anatolian weaving. 161 × 313 cm (5'3" × 10'3"), close to 5 square meters (roughly 54 square feet).

03From ground to pile

Wool and cotton, handwoven in Türkiye. A sandık eskisi, "old from the chest": woven, put away and never laid down. Laid lengthwise between two facing sofas, it takes the front legs of both along its edges and leaves the coffee table in the middle.

04After the color

The red and black stripes sit at the same warm depth as a walnut or dark oak table. The navy stripes appear once more in an indigo linen curtain, and kilim and curtain share the same cool register. Some of the diamond bands are edged on both sides by thin orange stripes.