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The culture of Turkish Rugs
Before marriage, while mastering the textile arts, young girls
create the ceyiz, a dowry collection of beautiful things that will be useful
in their future homes. A girl might knit socks and create a heybe, a saddlebag,
for her husband to carry over his shoulder at the market in a public display
of her domestic skills; she will embroider towels and weave pillows, carpets
and wallhangings. Her new home will be decorated with memories of her girlhood
and family. As she looks at her kilims she will see herself and her sisters
and her neighbors woven together in affection. While creating the ceyiz in youth,
the weaver makes things that, if necessary, can later be sold to benefit her
new family.
Except at harvest when all hands are busy in the fields, a carpet is rising
on the loom in every house, and when the sun is up, at least two women
are at work. Most weaving is done by girls and women between the
ages of 14 and 26 who form together into a special community of work within
each neighborhood of the village. They move fluidly in and out of each other's
homes with no need to knock. They come to visit and when they visit, they sit
and weave. Their fathers and husbands are away in the fields or sitting
in the teahouse.
A young girl learns gradually in childhood by sitting beside her mother, her
sister, the other women of the village; she learns by watching and by absorbing
what is going on around her. The master weaver must begin to learn early
and build the art into her process of growth. In this way, she learns the habits
of the hand that make the work easy rather than self-conscious, and thus gains
the ability for innovation and mastery.
As young women move through the village, stopping to visit, weaving while they
visit, carpets accumulate the contributions of a wide circle of friendship.
Sitting to weave a spell with her friend, the visitor might create an intentional
inversion in a minor motif or introduce a spot of surprising
color. For the weaver it is a hatra, or a memento of the time a girlhood friend
stopped by and helped for a while. The carpets record the friendships and
events of girlhood, and when the weaver leaves, taking the carpets of her dowry
with her to the village of her husband, they will remind her of these times.
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