A GROUP OF WARP-FACED WEAVING WITH KNOTTED PILE FROM ANATOLIA

Abstract

The main livelihood of the nomadic Turkish communities who came to Anatolia was animal breeding. These communities have traded these animals, benefited from their meat, milk and leathers, either turned their wool and hair into yarn and produced fabric, carpet, plain weaves from them with simple hand tools and looms, or felt the fibers directly and created textile surfaces and forms. As they made their tents, which they used as houses or shelters, with all these textiles; Many of the items used inside and outside of these tents were created by using one or more of these textile production techniques together with the material at hand, according to the needs, usage area, traditional knowledge and aesthetic taste.

It is thought that flat weavings such as fabrics and rugs first developed in the history of textiles, and then knotted pile weavings such as carpets. Some textile experts accept long pile, fleece-like weaves such as “tülü” with sparse knot rows as a transition between flat weaves and dense knotted and rich patterned weaves such as carpets. Carpet, tülü and its derivatives are generally woven on the loom as a whole. However, in Central Anatolia, there are tülü-like textiles created by knotting warp-faced weaving on narrow-width floor looms, mohair tufts, wool or cotton yarns, and strips from various fabrics during production. These weavings are generally woven as three separate pie- ces and then joined together and have a lively and colorful appearance thanks to the piles. These textiles, which are called “çırpı kilim”, “Sibelek” and “at çulu”, are generally used as curtains, covers or rugs. Examples of warp faced traditional textiles with knotted pile, which are the practical production of Anatolian people, are not very common in publications. In this paper, it is aimed to introduce eight weavings that are composed of such examples and brought together in a special collection.