Rug Traditions
''Throughout the ages, a beautiful handmade rug has been an important part of Turkish and eastern culture as well as an exquisite symbol of enduring art.
In recent years there has been a increased interest in rugs, with the most important change being to view oriental rugs
not just as a floor decoration, but as a true work of art.''
Rug Weaving
Women learned their skills at an early age and took months or years to weave the beautiful rugs and kilims that she would create as traditional floor coverings, tent decorations, camel bags, prayer rugs, or important carpets for ceremonial occasions.
These weavings comprised her marriage dowry and her reputation was enhanced by both the quantity and the quality of her ‘dowry’ weaving.
For thousands of years women have been hand weaving rugs using of single asymmetrical senna knot) for Persian carpets or double (symmetrical Ghiordes knots) for Turkish carpets. These are hand tied onto warp lines interspersed with perpendicular wefts.One or more wefts are placed to secure the knots in place, with a skilled weaver accomplishing 8000-12 000 knots on an eight-hour day. Hand spun wool from their own herds were used for warps ,wefts and knots in tribal and village carpets, with cotton and silk used for the warps of workshop carpets.
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History
The oldest fragment of a carpet was found in the frozen tomb of a nomadic chieftain. at Pazyryk in southern Siberia. Frozen since the 5th C. BC the Pazyryk carpet is surprisingly sophisticated meaning knotted pile rugs could have began up to a full century earlier.Little was known about t carpet making until it reached the Middle East in the 8th or 9th C with Turkic tribes.The time line again disappeared until the 12th C,when examples from the Selcuk period were found in Turkish mosques.Then by the 16th C onwards substantial numbers of Anatolian carpets were brought to Europe, where the concept of the Oriental carpet really started to take hold.However, modern interest in carpets only flourished again in 19th C as the ownership of an oriental carpet became a status symbol for the wealthy of Europe.
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Thanks to the unique tradition of making special rugs to donate to local mosques, Turkey has a richer inheritance of old carpets and a more complete record of its carpet weaving history than any other country.