Assignment. Read and translate the text, compare Turkish and Greek carpets. Pay particular attention to the necessity to keep the national uniqueness of the object described
Carpets are only the most famous and visible of Turkey’s traditional arts and crafts. Embroidery and lace-making are still practised in rural Turkey, as they have been for centuries. Primitive landscape painters once used horse-drawn wagons and carts as their venue; now it’s the wood-panelled sides of trucks. Turkish artisans also craft decorated wooden spoons, lathe-turned wooden items, lamps and stoves in tinplate, onyx and alabaster carvings, pottery and glass. Almost no one leaves the country without a blue-and-white nazar boncuğu (evil-eye charm), usually of glass but now also of plastic.
Turkey is famous for its beautiful carpets and kilims, and wherever you go you’ll be spoilt for choice as to what to buy. Unfortunately, the carpet market is very lucrative and the hard-sell antics of some dealers and their shills have tended to bring it into disrepute, putting many visitors off venturing into the shops. Also, with the tourism boom, carpet prices in Turkey have risen so much that it may actually be cheaper to buy your Turkish carpet at home. Indeed, we’ve heard one story of a man who bought up old kilims in the Paris flea market, had them cleaned, then brought them to Turkey to sell to tourists at high prices - creative recycling!
An age-old art: Turkish women have been weaving carpets for a very long time. These beautiful, durable, eminently portable floor coverings were a nomadic family’s most valuable and practical ‘furniture’, warming and brightening the clan’s oft-moved homes. The oldest-known carpet woven in the Turkish double-knotted Gördes style dates from between the 4th and 1st centuries ВС.
It is thought that hand-woven carpet techniques were introduced to Anatolia by the Seljuks in the 12th century. Thus it’s not surprising that Konya, the Seljuk capital, was mentioned by Marco Polo as a centre of carpet production in the 13th century.
The general pattern and colour scheme of old carpets was influenced by local traditions and the availability of certain types of wool and colours of dyes. Patterns were memorised, and women usually worked with no more than 18 inches of the carpet visible. Each artist imbued her work with her own personality, choosing a motif or a colour based on her own artistic preferences, and even events and emotions in her daily life.
In the 19th century, the European rage for Turkish carpets spurred the development of carpet companies. The companies, run by men, would deal with customers, take orders, purchase and dye the wool according to the customers’ preferences, and contract local women to produce the finished product. The designs might be left to the women, but more often were provided by the company based on the customers’ tastes. Though well made, these carpets lost some originality and spirit of the older work.
Even carpets and rugs made today often use same traditional patterns, such as the commonly used ‘eye’ (above)and ‘tree’ (right) patterns, and incorporate all sorts of symbols. At a glance two carpets might look identical, but closer examination reveals the subtle differences that give each Turkish carpet its individuality and much of its charm.
Traditionally, village women wove carpets for their own family’s use, or for their dowry. Knowing they would be judged on their efforts, the women took great care over their handiwork, hand-spinning and dyeing the wool, and choosing what they judged to be the most interesting and beautiful patterns. These days, many carpets are made not according to local traditions, but to the dictates of the market. Weavers in eastern Turkey might make carpets in popular styles native to western Turkey. Long-settled villagers might duplicate the wilder, hairier and more naive yörük (nomad) carpets.
Village women still weave carpets, but most of them work to fixed contracts for specific shops. Usually they work to a pattern and are paid for their final effort rather than for each hour of work. A carpet made to a fixed contract may still be of great value to its purchaser. However, the selling price should be lower than for a one-off piece.
Other carpets are the product of division of labour, with different individuals responsible for dyeing and weaving. What such pieces lose in individuality and rarity is often more than made up for in quality control. Most silk Hereke carpets are mass produced, but to standards that make them some of the most sought-after of all Turkish carpets.
Fearing that old carpet-making methods would be lost, the Ministry of Culture now sponsors a number of projects to revive traditional weaving and dyeing methods in western Turkey. Some carpet shops have stocks of these ‘project carpets’, which are usually of high quality.
A good carpet shop will have a range of pieces made by a variety of techniques. Besides the traditional pile carpets, they may offer double-sided flat-woven mats such as kilims. Some traditional kilim motifs are similar to patterns found at the prehistoric mound of Çatal Höyük, testifying to the very ancient traditions of flat-woven floor coverings in Anatolia. Older, larger kilims may actually be two narrower pieces of similar but not always identical design stitched together. As this is now rarely done, any such piece is likely to be fairly old.
Other flat-weave techniques include sumak, a style originally from Azerbaijan, in which coloured threads are wrapped around the warp. Cicims are kilims with small lively patterns embroidered on top of them.