Multicolor Hand-Knotted Wool Konya İnlice Prayer Rug

One end of it is a pointed arch, and that arch is what makes it a prayer rug: a hand-knotted wool seccade from İnlice, a village outside Konya, 100 × 161 cm (3'3" × 5'3"), multicolored, on a cotton foundation. The arch is the mihrab, the shape of the prayer niche a mosque sets into the wall facing Mecca, and on a rug it tells the user which way round the piece goes.

01Reading the motif

Everything else on the field is arranged to sit inside it: small hooked figures, a column of drawing up the middle, borders stacked two and three deep around the outside. Konya has been a weaving center since the Seljuk period, and the rugs found in the Alâeddin Mosque there are among the oldest Anatolian pile weavings anywhere.

02From the hand of the weaver

Village work from the district around it, like this, keeps the same stepped drawing at a smaller scale. Wool above, cotton beneath, and the knotting done in the village rather than in a workshop.

03Color, by the light

The colors are set at full strength against each other instead of graded, which is what gives a village prayer rug its brightness and also what makes it look busy under a hard lamp. It is sized for one person, as prayer rugs are, so it will not furnish a room — it belongs in a corner, beside a bed or on a wall.

04Knot by knot, by hand

Professional cleaning. Hand-knotted in İnlice near Konya, on a cotton foundation under a wool pile. A mihrab arch at one end, with stacked borders and small hooked figures inside it. 100 × 161 cm (3'3" × 5'3") — the size of one person kneeling. Multicolored, with tones butted up against one another instead of blended. Cleaned by a professional. A single piece. A prayer rug is the one format in weaving that has a top and a bottom, which is why this one will never look right laid sideways.