Turkish Carpets

At the end of our two-day tour to Troy and Gallipoli, our tour guide, Mr. G, asked if we wanted to see a carpet demonstration.  Of course our group did!  We went to this very nice shop where they explained how carpets are made and the differences between silk, wool, and cotton carpets.  The demonstrator was wonderful and taught us a lot about this traditional art.

This woman is working on a silk carpet.  It will take about 4 years
to complete this carpet.  The women who work on these carpets are specially
trained to do this detailed work.  You can see she is following the pattern above.
Several women will work on this carpet, as they can only work for 15 minutes at
a time due to the challenging work.  They get an hour break in between
each work session.

Beautiful silk rug

Trimming the knotted silk.  In a silk carpet, there are over 1,000 knots
in a square centimeter. 

Want to know how to tell the difference between a hand made and
machine made carpet?  When you walk from one side to the other,
the colours will change.  Like this....

Same carpet - from the other direction

My small - but fabulous - Turkish rug!