Turkish Rugs

Turkish rugs.

Turkey has a long history of making hand woven carpets. Today tourists visiting Turkey will count a visit to the Oriental rug shop as an essential part of their holiday. Turkey has evolved into a modern country and these days the rugs you see in the shops are more likely to come from Pakistan than to be made locally.

Rug weaving went through a revival in the late 1980’s. Rugs from Dosemealti, Melas and Konya became very popular here in the UK and throughout Europe. Most of the rugs were retailed by large department stores who were able to sell in great volume.  Large companies are very price conscious and relentlessly sought a cheaper buying price from suppliers that were fully committed to huge production. Inevitably quality went down as the Turkish rugs were woven to a set price. The cost of carpet production in Turkey kept increasing as the new modern Turkish economy mirrored its European neighbours. (Strange how things have turned out now the prosperity bubble has burst). Eventually the market turned away from Turkey and the bulk of the oriental rug production moved to the poorer areas of Northern Pakistan or India where labour cost were less

So in truth we import very few rugs from Turkey. Mostly we bring in flat-weave kilims that are very popular with our customers. Occasionally we get in a nice shipment from Turkey to there are always a few nice genuine Turkish rugs in our stock.

One area of carpet weaving that has survived in Turkey it that of reproduction carpets. Specialist weavers are able to reproduce some astonishing copies of beautiful Ottoman carpets. Often in very large sizes to suit the most lavish oriental interiors. I try to keep a few of these pieces in stock as samples. Then orders are taken and for specific sizes to be woven to order.