ANATOLIAN KILIM EXHIBITION

Text and photographs : Yelda Baler

I like visiting the Topkapi Palace best under the pale sun of autumn, hearing the crackle of the dry leaves, if I manage to see something extra in these visits, I radiate the good humour I'm in. This time, what took me there was the kilims collected from the mountains, valleys, tents, and market places of Anatolia. The pieces at display in the Imperial Mint Buildings consist of 40 kilims and hand woven textiles along with the three tents which Josephine Powell has collected from the nomads and villages of Anatolia over twenty years.

Josephine Powell, an American, has arrayed her passion for travelling that got hold of her in her thirties with the trips she made to Europe, Middle East, India and North Africa for the next twenty years. She photographed the lives of the villagers and the nomadic people here. This photographer who is now 84 has been continuing her research on the Turkish villages and nomadic life since 1974. Her greatest effort has resulted in creating a collection consisting mostly of Anatolian ethnographic objects, textiles, travel notes and her extensive photo archive.

She has donated the copies of around 5000 photos on the ethnography of Anatolia to the British Museum in London and to the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, and her collection of 30.000 photos, a library consisting of 1400 volumes of books, various weaving equipment and agricultural implements and numerous examples of hand woven textiles to the History Foundation: Tarih Vakfi. Thus she says the future of the photos and the collection have been secured. She has at the same time supplied future researchers with a unique collection.

n the collection, there are ethnographic items such as around 1 50 textile pieces, 250 agricultural and weaving implements, household items, rare costumes from central Anatolian mountain villages; 250 kilims, and around 1000 books and articles which range from geography, history and ethnography of Anatolia, Byzantine archaeology, Seljuk and the Ottoman periods, dying and textiles.
For many years Powell has travelled extensively in Anatolia, especially in the rural parts and among the nomadic people, taking photographs, and gathering objects. At the beginning she bought these objects from the villagers or the nomads themselves, but later she only bought pieces from the markets. She collected these objects some of which were intact, some in rags and tatters, some worn out, and put them away under the beds either folded or rolled up. Then the urge to share them and put them under protection overpowered everything else. These invaluable textiles and kilims finally brought to light greatly impressed those who visited the exhibition. Especially the three tents which were put up to display the environment and Iiving space where the pieces were produced were very impressive.The Turkoman tent, the Kurdish tent and the Yoruk-Nomads Tent... The word "Yoruk" means "those that are walking". Since the numerous plateaus and pastures of the Taurus mountains provided a suitable environment for the Asian way of living, the Yoruk and the Turkomans who started coming to Anatolia since the 11th century, were wandering about the southeast Taurus and the Antitaurus Mountains. The pastures of Anatolia gained a Turkish character with the presence of these nomadic people, who spent the autumn and the winter in the plains, the springs and the summers in the plateaus. The Yoruk women, who could put their babies to sleep while they were walking, could produce the textiles they needed as they moved from one plateau to the other with their camels.

The Black Tent
The Black Tents which have been produced in this region for thousands of years have been the dwellings of the cattle-breeding Turks who lived in the plateaus in the summer and in the warm plains in the winters. The black tent, which consists of roughly woven material made out of black goat hair, does not allow the heat to escape, the cold and the water to penetrate and is easily transportable. Thus its usage became widespread. The interior of the tent, which is erected using 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 poles, is arranged in separate sections. Therefore, the areas for common living, eating and sleeping are all separate from each other.

The tent with the most number of poles belongs to the chief of the tribe. Perhaps the most interesting tradition is the putting up of a white tent for the bride and the bridegroom.
The goat-hair tent which is being displayed in the historical space in the exhibition is woven by the nomads of Sarıkecili. Decorated sacs are aligned along the side walls of the tent which has seven sections. These sacks for carrying the goods which are woven by the women of the family are produced in pairs so that they can be carried on the two sides of the camels. Those that have vertical decorations are made for carrying the family's clothes and other belongings.
The ones with horizontal decorations are for food supplies and are therefore more tightly woven.
The piles of the thick mattresses used as beds are covered with kilims called load carpets. In the markets the word namazlik is also used for these kilims. The partridge cage the nomads use when they go for partridge hunting is another item that belongs to the tent. Although the carpets furnishing the tents belong to the nomads of Western Anatolia, they are also widely seen in Central and Southern Anatolia.
The hand woven textiles of the nomads who live in the plains and the mountain regions around Konya, Aksaray and Nigde carry the same features with those of the villagers; the hook figure
repeated in the centre, the lozenge motifs and the motifs on the boarder are the shared motifs. The kilims of this region which are on display have been woven before the 19th century, that is, before chemical dyes were used.

The Yurt
This dome-shaped tent covered with felt is called topak ev in Anatolia, and yurt in the West. The tent on display which belonged to a family of the Begdik Turkomans, who live in the plains to the west of the Bor district of Nigde was being used in the plateaus until five years ago. The Begdiks have preserved their traditions, language and art successfully until very recent times. The motifs of the kilims they wove take their names from daily household utensils. Motifs such as dibek-mortar, yaba-fork, çömçe-wooden ladle are also used as the names of kilims. The colours, compositions and the motifs of these kilims are original. However, the features of some kilims from Kirsehir, Afyon, Malatya, Yozgat and Obruk display certain similarities.

The Big Black Tent Made of Goat Hair
Twenty years ago, this tent belonging to a family from the Deliyan tribe of Belen village in Potürge, a district in Malatya, was used when they went to their summer camps in the plateaus. The tent which is made up of eleven strips of woven goat hair stiched together is 10 meters long and 4 meters wide. It is put up with the help of wooden pegs. It shows similarities with the Kurdish tents used in eastern Anatolia and with the Arab and Berber tents. If five more pieces are added to these tents and the cloth is lowered to the ground level, they can very easily be used in the winter time as well. The decorated sacs for clothes, the sacs for food and the families sleeping mattresses are placed at the rear of the tent and are covered with a large kilim.
In nomadic life, one of the earliest modes of living in the history of man, the most important concepts have been shaped within the limits of sacredness, fecundity and fertility, as it is in settled societies. The most important problem of the nomad is to protect himself and his cattle against the wars and to secure reproduction. The sole aim is to pursue a continuous happy life in abundance. Under these conditions, considering the woman who gives birth divine therefore associating her with the fertile land results from her reproductive, protective and nourishing character.
Furthermore, these features form the subjects of the motifs of the kilims. Angle pieces, ram's horns, teeth of a comb, spirals, trains of cranes, gnarls pour out of the heart of the weaver. Customs and traditions are woven on the kilim. Symbols bring forth the sound of thousands of years, just like the voices of the nomads brought with the kilims Josephine Powell displayed...

Who is Josephine Powell?
Powell was born in May 15th, 1919 in New York. She graduated from Cornell University in 1941. In 1945, she got her postgraduate diploma from the University of Columbia. In the following years she travelled, photographing objects of art, archaeology and ethnography. Between 1952-1974 she had excursions in Europe, Middle East, India and Northern Africa. From 1974 on, she studied the villages and nomadic life in Turkey. The total of 30.000 photographs and various journals Josephine Powell produced during her excursions in Anatolia between 1974-1994 constitute a very special contribution to the legacy of rural culture in Turkey.