My traveling to Ayvaçik came about as part of my fieldwork as a folklorist at the University of Pennsylvania. It was made possible by Henry Glassie and George Jevremovic, who are currently completing a book on Turkish weaving based on their long term observations and friendships in the weaving areas. Before coming to Penn, I had studied Oriental rugs and textiles, and their producing cultures, using them as models in my formal studies of art history and anthropology. In 10 years' time, I thought I'd developed a pretty good understanding of both form and process. Lucky for me, Henry, one of the world's great folklorists, quickly recognized that my studies lacked the insight that only comes with having been there . The proposal was that I would accompany George on one of his business trips. I would be free to observe everything, to ask questions concerning any phase of the rug business, village life and rugweaving, or of Turkish culture in general. It was an offer I didn't need to hear twice.
You've never been out of the United States and you're going to Turkey on your first trip?" were Beri's parting words. "Good luck!" It was true, too, and why Henry and George wanted me to go: for fresh eyes to see what they had seen and recorded over the last few years. Me, I wanted to see if my bookish perception was accurate, and happy to say, there were some similarities. Even before getting off the plane in Istanbul, I noticed a new and very distinctive smell: an admixture of woodsmoke and burning coal laced with diesel fumes, unlike the smell of woodsmoke, coal and diesel fumes in the United States. It was sweet and acrid at the same time, and, being winter, the haze was so thick that even in daylight I could only see a block or two away. As we drove all over Turkey, this smell, sometimes minus the diesel fumes, would precede our passing through a village.
We rented a car and drove southwest, along the Sea of Marmara, on the Asian side of Turkey. Buildings and houses became infrequent sights, and those that occasionally clustered near the shore were Mediterranean in character. We took the ferry across the Dardanelles to Çannakkale. Çannakkale...the place you read about in rug books! The name is both of a town and a district, the latter being the equivalent to our counties. The town is, by Turkish standards, modern with glass windows, stoplights and sidewalks, although donkey carts were never out of sight. Through town (about four blocks), we turned right onto the two-lane blacktop that runs down the Aegean coast, turning due south to Ayvaçik. Up into the hills, into an idyllic landscape that looks like Big Sur, with burly wind-twisted pines and the ruins of Troy to boot. The herders here build low fences out of dead branches of a thorny and tangle-prone shrub that appears to be the natural enemy of sheep; no cloven hoof dared breach the line, although they seemingly could have done so in a skip. We passed the Ezine turnoff, continued on to Ayvaçik. Seeing famous rug names on big green highway signs, just like the ones we have here, is one of the little incongruities that makes Turkey so interesting. Turning right, we passed a pine grove and climbed a mild hill. "There's the DOBAG building over there," George pointed out. A few hundred yards later, we drove up on the recently laid sidewalk that is also Ahmet Balçi's driveway.
Ahmet Balçi is a friend of Henry and George. He met us as we stepped out of the car, lead us into his new house, introduced me to his wife, Rahime, and Fatma, his daughter. The house is probably the most modern in Ayvaçik, with running water and electricity, although his neighbor in an older house has a telephone. Heat is by modern woodstove, with one in the "social" room and one in the weaving room (Rahime is a master weaver of long standing). Ahmet lead us through the large unheated front room (what we would call the living room), newly woven rugs on the floor, into the smaller social room, already warm with neighbors and a glowing stove. Within minutes Rahime and Fatma began bringing food to us, course after course, and Fatma brought a pot of well-steeped tea, chai, served in the Turkish manner -- in what is essentially a tall shot glass, sugar cubes aside with small stirring spoons.
After dinner, we drove up to the outskirts of town to look at a few rugs in progress. Typically, we'd approach a small rubble stone structure that by all outward appearances was uninhabited. Sometimes they were free-standing; others were add-ons to similarly constructed houses. Frequently, the small free-standing buildings also served as storage sheds, holding sacks of grain, wool, and Çam (pine) dust that is burned for heat. We'd enter, ducking under low beams, cold enough to see our breath, then round a corner, lift up the tarpaulin over the doorway to the adjoining room, and there would be three or four weavers quietly working at a couple of looms by the heat of a woodstove. The only sound was a rhythm of soft thuds made by the plucked warps every time a weaver cut the yarn away from a newly tied knot. Ahmet and George would converse with the weavers, asking them how they were doing, if there was anything that they needed, and so on. Nightfall was coming as we climbed higher up the mountainside, over a rock-strewn road used more by donkeys, sheep, goats, and the occasional horse. George parked the car and we walked up the steep footpath into the village, chickens clucking as they announced our arrival. As we entered, a boy of about five or six peeked out from behind a doorway. "Hos geldeniz" ("You are welcome!") he exclaimed, on the verge of ducking into the doorway again."Hos buldduk" ("We feel welcomed!") we replied, and children began appearing as we worked our way up the stoney path.
The rugs we saw were so artistically and technically refined it hardly seemed possible that they could be created under such primitive conditions, on looms of rough-hewn logs and branches. The armchair arguments of what is survival and what is revival began to pale with the realization that, for the last few centuries, the same types of rugs have been woven in these very villages. These were not replicas of old rugs, they were vital expressions of the regional culture. Up here, above town, the houses looked less like architecture and more like natural outcroppings. And there, atop the highest outcropping, was - silhouetted against the evening sky - a television antenna; inside the house next to a large loom was a 26-inch color Sony running off a generator and a car battery! The weaver's husband had purchased them last year with the rug profits. To them, it's probably no stranger than us having their rugs in our living rooms.
What I had seen in an evening was plenty. I had learned aspects of the rugweaver's lives and aspirations that I had never before pondered. What effect would television have upon the rugs of Ayvaçik?
Very early the next morning, we drove back to Ayvaçik, picked up Ahmet, and drove out to the remote villages. Kösedere was a remote as any, cleaved from a rugged mountainside overlooking the Aegean Sea. It has a population of around 150 and, as in other villages, they refer to themselves as Turkmen; they are the remnants of the Osmanli (Ottoman) Turks who migrated from Central Asia and settled in the present area between 500 and 700 years ago. Also well integrated into the population are the fair-haired, blue-eyed Tcherkess, or Circassians, whose ancestral homeland is the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas. Some say their families had moved west around the time of the Russian Revolution, others said they had settled much earlier. A large community of ethnic Caucasians lives in neighboring Kozak, a Turkic name that as all rugsters know may or may not be related to Kazak or Cossack, and that Kozak in Ukranian means "free person." Whatever the origin, there are indications that a cultural interchange between the Caucasus and Western Anatolia has been occurring for a long, long time. Compare the classic three medallion soumaks from Kuba to early rugs from Bergama, medallion Karachovs to large pattern Holbeins, or Kasim Ushaks to some early rugs from Çannakkale.
By necessity, Kösedere and similar villages are puite self-sufficient. There are always flocks of sheep, chickens, donkeys, cats and dogs, and a few horses; the ground is fertile and the climate mild enough to yield crops throughout the year. At the foot of the village is a school, its exterior adorned with the silhouette of Ataturk. And, as in every village, there is a mosque with minaret, and a teahouse where the men meet and relax and talk, whereas the women socialize while weaving, a pot of tea always atop the stove or over the hearth.
To these people, this is the lifestyle that works, and it has done so for centuries, probably even millenia. It is tradition in action. The most poignant aspect of this lifestyle, brought from Central Asia across Anatolia to the Aegean coast, is the total ignorance of the sea. Despite the fact that they have lived within sight of the sea for at least 500 years, they have in no way incorporated it into their lives, not for food, commerce, or leisure. The coastline is where the land ends, and no more.
To most of the villagers, Ayvaçik is The Big City. The buildings are of the same construction as those in the villages, plus some of locally made brick, but some venture to two and three stories. Along the main drag, a narrow cobblestone street, there are storefronts of glass, the businesses being a couple of restaurants, a general store, a shop that sells various electrical appliances, radios and parts, and there are several undefined storefront workspaces. Once a month, the weavers' husbands come down from their villages with rugs to sell. With rare exception, the husbands do the negotiating and selling. The buyers are primarily dealers from Istanbul who, in turn, retail the rugs through their shops or wholesale them to other dealers from Istanbul, Europe, or America. No single rug reflects the total production; quality is entirely up to the weaver and her family, as all weaving is done in houses or the "studios" described earlier.
The most popular rug size is six meters (a "six meter rug" translates to a big 9'x6'), and three compositions long associated with the area prevail. The turnali (crane), so called because of an abstruse resemblance of one of the design elements to cranes (the birds), is familiar to us as the Bergama-cum-soumak pattern with three or four blue diamond-shaped medallions on a red field. Tornula rugs, however, usually have two medallions. The altan tobac (literally, "gold leaf") refers to an overall pattern of small stepped elements. The charkla iylak ("wheel") uses two or three "large pattern Holbein" medallions with large "spokes" radiating from their centers. Rugs smaller than six meters echo the designs of the larger rugs, sometimes focusing on one or a few of the elements rather than complete compositions.
George has arranged to have other patterns, some nontraditional, woven as well. In order to do this successfully, he paid particular attention to what the individuals do best, to find weavers who can become fluent and creative in the new visual expression rather than simply copy a given design. This was easier said than done, though, because the weavers today tend to be literal-minded and pragmatic, and part of their artistic tradition has been impinged upon by the desire to weave what they think the buyers want, leaving too little room for their own aesthetic judgments. George set about convincing them that it was acceptable, even desirable, to do what they wanted within the design format; if there was a particular design element that the weaver objected to, or one she especially liked, she was encouraged to take whatever artistic license she thought was appropriate. When he wanted rugs in Transylvanian patterns, he found weavers who thought they could weave their personalities into the compositions rather than copy another weaver's work.
Not surprisingly, some of the weavers developed fondnesses for the new designs. In Kösedere, we walked down the hillside to a shed to look at a six meter rug still on the loom. It was one of a few Khotan-type rugs that George was having made, a pattern indigenous to East Turkestan and not at all traditional to Ayvaçik. Behind the large loom was a smaller loom with a partially completed long rug on it, its weave considerably finer, the pattern a modified Khotan. The husband quickly explained that this rug was not going to be offered for sale, for it was going to be a dowry piece. Its weaver liked the design enough to weave it into a piece that she hoped will be passed down through her family for generations to come. If it is contrary to our ideas of what a traditional dowry piece should be, we should at least realize that cultural corruption is our context, not theirs. Oriental rugs haven't corrupted our culture, despite their enormous influences on everything from architectural embellishments to neckties. An interesting aside, a few of the villagers wanted to know if it is really true that Americans prefer old rugs to new ones, which to them is very strange. The matter of dyes was brought up. When asked if they would rather have a new rug with natural dyes or an old one with natural dyes, every answer favored the new one. As one of the few people in Ayvaçik to own an automobile, Ahmet even retorted, "Would you prefer an old automobile or a new one?" While the Bugatti Type 35B was never known for its reliability, economy, or comfort, its salient features would be lost in the translation, and so it is with rugs.
The reintroduction of natural dyes in the region has been most welcome, and local dyers, both men and women, now take great pride in their art, and the range of colors is now impressive. A wonderful color I found in both Eastern and Western Anatolia is the most appealing green imaginable. It begins as a bright yellow, which is briefly dipped in indigo to achieve the desired shade. When held in the light, the yellow still shows through in places. When the yarn is knotted and clipped, the core of yellow shows through and, with a little lateral wear on the edges of the fiber, it will probably be rejected by indiscriminate eyes as dreaded tip-fade, despite its rare ability to duplicate the richness of sunlit moss. The yellow yarns used to make this color, I was told, are ones that are slightly off-shade but bright enough to react to the blue. Yellow is derived from boiling the yarn with onion skins and straw. The color comes out rather flat but is dipped in madder for a second or two to impart the rich honey tone that is so desirable.
To us, the natural dyes are the holy of holies, but apart from the dyers and only a few of the weavers, I'm not convinced our enthusiasm is shared. My questioning about naturally dyed rugs, new and old, was flawed by my assumption that the preference was to natural dyes in general. I mean, it only makes sense! When asked if they preferred kök boya ("root" dyes) to "packet" boya, the villagers always favored root dyes, but never without lengthy and indirect answers. "They're telling you that because they think that's what you want to hear," George kept saying, "...just look at how they're dressed." He had a point. While the men were dressed in rustic versions of European suits, always in somber tones, the women were dressed in peasant clothes in peasant colors -- now in the high voltage synthetic palette, with the frequent addition of Western button-front sweaters. Rug making may be their art, but when they knit sweaters, they like the artists here work in acrylics. George thinks that if the urbane rug enthusiasts ceased insisting on natural dyes, there would be a major shift back to chrome dyes within five years. And after seeing all those Orlon sweaters, I wouldn't be surprised if we live to see genuine hand-knotted folk rugs of high-tech fiber. In Turkey, anything is possible, even synthetic wool with natural dyes.
To produce a truly handmade rug -- with natural dyes, handspun wool, hand-knotted and sheared -- is a complicated endeavor of agreement, commitment, and trust. It is truly heartening to observe the smiles of pride and accomplishment when the final, spectacular result is rolled out before our eyes, unifying dyers, spinners, weavers, and buyers into a viable creative partnership. It is disheartening to realize how many fine rugs will then be given a color reduction wash and have their black details clipped away in order to give them an antique look, to make them more salable in the West. Not only does this negate the appeal to the true connoisseur, it brings the work down to the realm of Elvis impersonators and kit cars that look like Bugattis. These clipped and bleached rugs, like the painted and bleached Persian rugs of 60 years ago, speak more of our culture than of folk art of their producing cultures.
