A Patchwork History of Textile Use in Southeastern Turkey: Examination of a Rare Set of Kurdish Work Clothing

In 1919 a pair of refugees fleeing from strife occurring in Southeastern Turkey arrived at a mission station in Mardin wearing well-worn Kurdish everyday clothing as a disguise. Subsequently the mission worker who received the couple donated these ensembles to our costume collection. These rare garments are artifacts of the original wearers, as well as of the experience of the refugees, presumably Armenian, who were fleeing from the terrible events of this period. When clothing is saved, it is usually special occasion clothing, not the sort commonly worn for daily work. One of the most interesting features of these garments is the extensive patching. There are more than twenty different fabrics, including several types of hand-woven, sometimes naturally dyed and hand block-printed textiles. There are also industrially woven print cottons. Therefore these garments are rare documents of late 19th-early 20th c. multicultural textile production, trade and use in this region. Although today we may think of southeastern Turkey as isolated, it was then a nexus of trade routes, including the major river systems of the Tigris and Euphrates, and the network of roads that connected into the trade routes generally termed the Silk Road. These garments will also be discussed in the context of field research on traditional textiles and dress done in this region. In addition, historical images and eyewitness descriptions of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Kurdish dress will provide context

Rediscovering Camlet: Traditional mohair cloth weaving in Southeastern Turkey

It is well known that mohair, derived from the Angora goat, was long unique to Turkey, and only successfully reared outside of that region in the 150 years. The term Angora is an archaic spelling of the city now known as Ankara, now Turkey’s capital, but in the Ottoman era it was a sleepy town known as a center for weaving and selling the mohair raised in the region. As the ambassador from Emperor Ferdinand of Austria to Constantinople, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbeq made a journey into Anatolia to Amasya in 1556, where Sultan Suleyman was encamped, one of the first official visitors to the Ottoman Empire allowed to travel so deep into Anatolia. He encountered herds of the mohair goats, and wrote that: “We saw also the famous goats from whose fleece or hair...is made the well-known cloth, known as camlet or watered cloth. The hair of these goats is very fine and wonderfully glossy, and hangs right down to the ground. The goat-herds do not shear it, but comb it out, and it is hardly less beautiful than silk.... Their food, which is the thin, dry grass of the district, is supposed to contribute to the fineness of their wool; for it is certain that, if they are removed to other pastures, their coats change with the change of food, and their species is scarcely recognizable. The luxury cloth was known as camlet to English merchants and sof to Ottomans in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The fiber was known in Ottoman Turkish as tiftik, as it still is in modern Turkish. The term camlet was apparently derived from the erroneous assumption by early traders that this cloth was made from camel hair. The English term mohair apparently is derived from an Arabic term mukhayyar, meaning “chosen” or “preferred.” Since the mohair goat does not thrive in the southern deserts of the Arab Middle East, it is likely that this term came to English merchants via Ottoman Turkish, which contained many Arabic words; indeed a similar term can be found in a modern Turkish dictionary: mukayyet, meaning “registered”, or “restricted”– also implying a select status for the object in question. In a further turn of vocabulary, the English term mohair is identified as the source from which the French term moiré is derived; the watered finish characteristic of the imported mohair cloth being closely associated with the fiber content initially, although moiré finishing was later applied by Europeans to silks as well

THE GAZIANTEP CLOTH TRADE: A STUDY OF A PUTTING-OUT SYSTEM OF CLOTH PRODUCTION IN SOUTHEASTERN TURKEY

An Ottoman era system of cloth production and marketing identified in Gaziantep is a rare survival of traditional production patterns once central to the Ottoman Turkish economy. This system is descended from the much older Ottoman production system that once organized textile manufacturing throughout the Ottoman Empire. Textile manufacturing had been an important part of the economy of Asia Minor since the dawn of history. It was noteworthy throughout this region in both the Roman and Byzantine eras, and during the early Muslim rule of the Selcuk Turks beginning in the eleventh century. The legendary silk road linking east and west was really a network of trade routes connecting various northern and southern routes between the cities of Asia and the entrepots of the Eastern Mediterranean. Therefore it should not be surprising that during and after the Ottoman conquest in the thirteen to fifteenth centuries, textiles were being produced commercially in every part of Anatolia. The silk textiles of Bursa and the court manufactories of Constantinople are well known, as is Aleppo as a center of the silk trade. However, these centers were in fact the mercantile hubs of a much larger network of production. Gaziantep cloth production had strong connections to Aleppo, about 60 miles to the south, Prior to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire these towns were part of one economic and political region, and international textile trade network that also included Urfa, Maras and Kilis to the north (See Map)

Market Effects on the Design and Construction of Carpets in the Milas Region of Southwestern Turkey, 1963–1993

Beginning in 1964 my husband and I were involved in the development of a village carpet weaving cooperative in Southwestern Turkey. We lived with the weavers of Çömlekçi from 1964 to 1966, as part of the first Peace Corps rural community development program in Turkey. Between 1966 and 1969 we continued to work with the cooperative in its efforts to develop markets and quality control standards while working as Peace Corps staff. Since leaving Turkey in 1969, I have visited Çömlekçi periodically, most recently in 1992 and 1994. The success of the Çömlekçi cooperative in tum generated carpet cooperatives throughout the province of Muǧla. This paper describes my observations of changes in the design and construction of Çömlekçi carpets between 1964 and 1994

Sustainability of Handwoven Carpets in Turkey: The Context of the Weaver

Forms of Production Past research, conducted mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, has identified three forms of production in which carpets are woven as commodities. These are petty-commodity production, the putting-out system, and workshop production. Petty-commodity production involves weaving in the home, with the male head of the household or other male relatives selling the finished product to a carpet dealer or at a local or regional market (fig. 1). The family owns the loom and other weaving supplies, and family members purchase or prepare the yarn themselves. Under the putting-out system, the yarn, rug patterns and perhaps the loom is supplied by a dealer who collects the finished product. Following the workshop model, weavers work in a centralized location, away from their homes, with all materials and patterns supplied by a manufacturer (figs. 2 and 3). Workshop production may also take the form of village- or government-organized cooperatives, in which women may provide their own materials and choose their own patterns, use materials and patterns provided by the cooperative, or engage in some combination thereof. Under all three systems women may be paid by the piece, by the knot, or by the square meter. These different modes of production are suited to different settings. Where women are able to weave only intermittently due to other duties they are likely to weave in the home as this form of production can be stopped and started at will. Indeed, that is how weaving and many other art forms primarily practiced by women (such as crochet, and needle-point lace) developed – as a way of filling in so-called ‘empty time’ with activities that did not interfere with other domestic duties. Home-based production (either petty commodity or putting out) is most suited to areas that have intensive year-round crops (as in the case of diversified cash crop agriculture), or where families are small and thus there is not as much ‘empty time’. Workshop weaving is most likely found in places with distinct agricultural and non-agricultural seasons or where people live in extended-family households and thus chores are shared among many family members. Under these conditions some women can leave the house and thus weave for extended periods of time uninterrupted

Course Syllabus FSAD 1250-Fa 2011

FSAD 1250, Art, Design and Visual Thinking, Course Syllabus by instructor Charlotte Jirousek, Fall 201

Biography: Charlotte Jirousek

Biography of Charlotte Jirousek, Associate Professor, Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design (FSAD

Course Syllabus FSAD 1250-Fa09

FSAD 1250 Art, Design and Visual Thinking, Course Syllabus by Instructor Charlotte Jirousek, Fall 200

Course Syllabus FSAD 6750-Sp10

FSAD 6750, Aesthetics and Meaning in World Dress, Course Syllabus by Instructor Charlotte Jirousek, Spring 201

Course Syllabus FSAD 4200-Fa 2012

FSAD 4200, History of Color and Design in Textiles, Course Syllabus by Instructor Charlotte Jirousek, Fall 201