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Campaign Turkish Rugs

CAMPAIGN STYLE

Sometimes called “knock-down” furniture, campaign furniture was designed to be folded, collapsed, taken apart and packed flat to load onto a ship or a camel’s back. Although mobile furniture for military campaigns dates back to the Romans, the British Army in its global conquests in the 18th and 19th centuries defined the style with sturdy and elegant pieces. Even in a tent thousands of miles from London, a four-poster bed, dining table and seating could simulate the comforts of home.

Antique and vintage campaign-style furniture was also initially designed as propaganda. The mahogany and teak structures were part of a purposeful demonstration of power in these campaigns, with the colonizing military officers imposing their culture and view of what they considered “civilized” on a given land and its peoples. Designers and manufacturers including Thomas Butler, Ross & Co. of Dublin, and Morgan & Sanders contributed to the rapid production of this furniture as the British Empire expanded through Africa, Asia and Australia.

Campaign furniture was utilitarian as well as refined, fitted with recessed brass handles and brass angles on stackable chests and other case pieces to protect vulnerable corners. The Wellington chest was one of the most famous pieces to come out of this style, named for the Duke of Wellington, who slept in his campaign bed long after his battles were over.

The flexibility of campaign-style furniture would influence 20th-century Scandinavian modernists such as Kaare Klint, Mogens Koch and Arne Norell. For his 1930s Safari chair, Klint drew on the simple Roorkhee chair, named for a town in northern India. The lightweight and adaptable campaign-style seat was created in the late 19th century and had no fixed joinery. The Roorkhee’s influence can also be seen in the Wassily chair, a pared-down work of tubular metal and durable canvas conceived by legendary Bauhaus instructor Marcel Breuer.

Now, 21st-century designers like Jomo Tariku and Dokter and Misses are creating pieces that recognize the contributions of African artisans to campaign furniture in order to reframe this style without overlooking its difficult past.

Find a collection of authentic antique and vintage campaign bedroom furniture, chairs, decorative objects and other pieces on 1stDibs.

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Style: Campaign
Turkish Hereke Rug
Located in New York, NY
A one of a kind small finely woven turkish rug. We can also see this piece be used as a wall covering. 4'3" x 5'10"
Category

Early 20th Century Turkish Campaign Turkish Rugs

Materials

Wool

Turkish Hereke Rug
Turkish Hereke Rug
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Antique Turkish Sivas Rug
Located in New York, NY
A square shaped finely woven antique Turkish sivas small rug.
Category

Early 20th Century Turkish Campaign Turkish Rugs

Materials

Wool

Symbolic Turkish Sivas Carpet
Located in New York, NY
A highly inspiring directional Turkish sivas carpet woven for the Turkish government. Inscribed is the name of the regime at the time, "OSMANI". You also see the same elements seen in the Turkish flag...
Category

Early 20th Century Turkish Campaign Turkish Rugs

Materials

Wool

Oversize Vintage 20th Century Turkish Oushak
Located in New York, NY
An enormous Turkish Oushak in candy color accents on a bone color ground. Full pile excellent condition. Measures: 14'5'' x 24'1''.
Category

20th Century Turkish Campaign Turkish Rugs

Materials

Wool

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Mid-20th Century Handmade Turkish Oushak Throw Rug in Muted Neutral Tones
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A vintage Turkish Oushak throw rug handmade during the mid-20th century with a muted and neutral color palette. Measures: 3' 5" x 7' 0".
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Bobyrug’s Nice Vintage Turkish Silk Kayseri Rug
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handmade Silk Hereke Rug, Turkey, 20th Century
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Exquisite design and quality workmanship silk Hereke rug - a true masterpiece that will elevate the decor of any space. This rug has been hand-knotted with great care and precision t...
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Signed Vintage Turkish Silk Hereke Rug, Flower of the Seven Mountains
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Christmas Stocking One of a Kind Made of a 1970s Hereke Silk Rug
Located in Lohr, Bavaria, DE
One of a kind Christmas stocking. This Christmas stocking was made using a fine 650 knot per square inch Hereke silk rug. The front is 100% pure luxur...
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Vintage Turkish Silk Hereke Prayer Rug with Tree of Life Design
Located in Dallas, TX
77026, vintage Turkish silk Hereke prayer rug with Tree of Life design. Give the look of woven wonders and warmth with this stunning silk Hereke rug....
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Antique Turkish Silk and Gold Hereke Tapestry with Flower of the Seven Mountains
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77024, this opulent antique Turkish silk and gold Hereke tapestry with flower of the seven mountains. Featuring a central medallion of cinnamon-red floating in a cut out medallion of...
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Vintage Handmade Turkish Rug Christmas Stocking
Located in Houston, TX
Handmade Vintage from the 1960s Materials: wool, cotton Sustainable, upcycled Turkish rug Christmas stocking made from hand-woven rug fragments. Width: 13 inches Height: 17 inches ...
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Bobyrug’s Pretty Antique Turkish Rug
Located in Saint Ouen, FR
Nice little Turkish, Transylvanian double mihrab design rug with pretty colors, entirely hand knotted with wool velvet on cotton foundation. ✨✨✨ "Experience the epitome of luxury an...
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Early 20th Century Handmade Turkish Oushak Runner
Located in New York, NY
An antique Turkish Oushak rug in runner format handmade during the early 20th century. Measures: 2' 8" x 10' 9" Turkish rugs & carpets: Until the Great Persian Carpet Revival in the later 19th century, the “Oriental rug” was Turkish. For nearly six centuries, Turkish rugs, both scatter, room size, and even larger, thoroughly dominated the European import market. Whereas the Persian carpet can be divided into urban, village, and tribal types, in Turkey and its predecessor the Ottoman Empire, rugs almost exclusively came from village weavers and from a small number of urban workshops. Ninety percent village, nine percent city, one percent tribal. Turkish weavers have, with very few exceptions, always worked with the symmetric (Turkish) knot. Wool foundations are standard practice among both town and village weavers. The exceptions, very finely woven 20th century and recent Herekeh silks from near Istanbul, and early 17th century Ottoman Court rugs from Bursa, constitute only a tiny part of the total. Always pricey, they appealed and still appeal to the clients who want lots of knots and perfect execution instead of individual personality. The urban workshops have been centered around the western Turkish city of Oushak and its attendant port town of Smyrna. Oushak weaves with the trends in fashion. When color saturated medallion carpets were needed, Oushak was ready in the 17th and 18th centuries. When coarse red and blue carpets were required, Oushak and Smyrna in the 19th century wove them by the boatload. When tastes changed again, and the European dealers in Smyrna wanted room size carpets with lighter and unusual colors, and with Persianate designs, production ramped up in nearby Oushak. Those antique, all-wool construction turn-of-the-century carpets are still in high demand with designers. Antique carpets with allover, roughly drawn patterns on grounds of shrimp, rust, straw, cream, pale blue, and pale and pea green, hitherto unavailable colors, are in such demand today that contemporary Oushaks have attempted to mimic them with soft palettes, extra-large scale drawing and coarse weaves. Oushaks woven for the Turkish market, for palaces, houses and mosques were often oversize with large, repeating medallions, all in shades of (Turkey) red, dark blue, light blue-teal, and ivory, with lemon and green accents. Turkey, along with India, invented standard sizes. By vertically repeating the medallion, one could get one medallion, one with two end halves, two, three, etc. medallions, up to thirty or so feet in length. The process spared making new cartoons for each length and allowed a quicker turnaround time. Oushak, from the time of 15th century “Holbein” rugs onward, has always been a commercial center. The prayer niche directional rug is primarily a Turkish development. In the towns and villages east of Oushak, in Ghiordes, Kula, Ladik, Kirsehir, Mucur and Konya, among others, arch pattern scatters with bright palettes and weaves varying from relatively fine to moderate were almost the entire production. Antique examples were particularly popular in America around 1900. Other centers of village weaving were situated on the western coast and adjacent islands with the town of Melas and neighboring villages weaving geometric prayer rugs and scatters with a characteristic khaki green and lots of yellow. The other large region was in the northwest of Anatolia, near ancient Troy, with the sizable town of Bergama at its center. The satellite towns of Ezine, Karakecilli, Yuntdag, and Canakkale all wove colorful scatters with moderate weaves in all wool with geometric designs and cheerful palettes. Near to Istanbul, these were among the first Turkish rugs to reach Europe in the Renaissance. The earliest Turkish pieces depicted in Italian Old Master paintings display the so-called “Memling gul”, an allover panel pattern with hooked and stepped elements within the reserves. This pattern continues for centuries in the Konya area and in the Caucasus as well. Turkey is a land of villages and much of the most interesting Turkish weaving comes from one undiscovered village or another. The Konya-Cappadocia region of central Turkey includes the active towns of Karapinar, Karaman, Obruk, Sizma, and Tashpinar, all weaving Konya-esque scatters and long rugs. Karapinar has been active the longest, since the 17th century. The mosques in and around Konya have preserved locally-made rugs from the fourteenth. In the 20th century, the extra-long pile, many wefted Tulu rug was devised, with limited palettes and color block patterns. These are not really antique Tulus, but they must be a product of long-standing village tradition. There are thousands upon thousands of rural Turkish villages, almost all with easy access to local tribal wool. Rug students are discovering new names and rug types almost daily. The common denominators are bright colors, geometric designs, wool construction, moderate to coarse weaves and symmetric knots. Synthetic dyes hit the Turkish rug industry quickly and hard after 1870, and they penetrated to even the most off-the-beaten-track villages. This development was almost entirely negative. The village weavers used fugitive or overly bright dyes which ruined the color harmonies built up over centuries. Characteristic types disappeared or were negatively transmuted. The Turkish village rug of the 1870 to 1920 period is nothing to be proud of. In the eastern provinces, the semi-nomadic Kurdish tribes, collectively called ‘Yuruks’, weave all wool, geometric pieces with medium to medium-coarse weaves, as well as kilims and other flatweaves. The rugs employ cochineal instead of madder for the reds, mustard yellows, greens, and various blues. They are under-collected like the Persian Afshars. Their rugs are in scatter and long rug formats. The far eastern Turkish town of Erzerum has a long tradition of idiosyncratic, semi-workshop rugs and further to the east is Kars with a tradition of rugs in the Caucasian Kazak manner. One Turkish specialty is the Yastiks or cushion cover, made in pairs for the public living rooms of village houses. These are larger rugs in miniature and good ones are highly collectible. Like other Turkish rustic weavings, ones with synthetic dyes are almost totally undesirable. Only the tribal Baluch make similar cushion covers, known as pushtis or balishts, in the same small, oblong format. Yastiks always have a back, usually in plain weave, so that they can be easily stuffed. When the Imperial Carpet Factory at Herekeh near Istanbul closed in the early 20th century, the highly proficient Armenian master weavers set up in the Kum Kapi district of Istanbul where they wove all-silk, exquisitely fine and elaborately detailed small pieces, sometimes enriched with metal thread, for the most discriminating European buyers. Today the best, signed Kum Kapi pieces, usually in the “Sultan’s head” prayer niche design, can fetch upwards of $100,000. They are strictly for the wall. An Interwar all-silk room size Kum Kapi carpet is both exceedingly rare and stratospherically priced. The workshops closed in the 1930s, but the weaving of extremely fine, all-silk small rugs in Herekeh was revived in the 1960s. There has been a recent vogue for larger Turkish village vintage...
Category

Early 20th Century Turkish Campaign Turkish Rugs

Materials

Wool

Bobyrug’s Pretty Antique Turkish Yastik Rug
Located in Saint Ouen, FR
Beautiful early 20th century Turkish Yastik rug with nice geometrical and tribal design and nice natural colors, entirely and finely hand knotted with wool velvet on wool foundation....
Category

Early 20th Century Turkish Campaign Turkish Rugs

Materials

Wool

Vintage Turkish Silk Hereke Carpet Tapestry with Metallic Threads
Located in Dallas, TX
77153 Vintage Turkish Silk Metallic Souf Hereke Tapestry, 01'11 x 02'08. Turkish Silk Metallic Souf Hereke Tapestries are exquisite masterpieces blending silk's luxurious elegance with the shimmering allure of metallic threads, originating from Turkey's renowned town of Hereke and crafted through traditional techniques passed down through generations. They boast intricate designs inspired by Turkish cultural heritage, featuring elaborate floral patterns, geometric shapes, and motifs symbolizing wealth, prosperity, and spirituality. The addition of metallic threads like gold or silver enhances their opulence, creating a radiant glow that mesmerizes viewers. Highly prized for their craftsmanship and historical significance, these tapestries adorn palaces, museums, and private residences, serving as cherished heirlooms and symbols of luxury and refinement, embodying the essence of Turkish culture and inviting admiration from all who encounter them. In a graceful homage to Louis XIV style, this hand-knotted Turkish silk metallic souf Hereke prayer rug...
Category

Mid-20th Century Turkish Campaign Turkish Rugs

Materials

Silver

Campaign turkish rugs for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a broad range of unique Campaign turkish rugs for sale on 1stDibs. Many of these items were first offered in the Mid-20th Century, but contemporary artisans have continued to produce works inspired by this style. If you’re looking to add vintage turkish rugs created in this style to your space, the works available on 1stDibs include rugs and carpets, more furniture and collectibles, wall decorations and other home furnishings, frequently crafted with fabric, wool and other materials. If you’re shopping for used Campaign turkish rugs made in a specific country, there are Asia, Caucasus, and Turkey pieces for sale on 1stDibs. It’s true that these talented designers have at times inspired knockoffs, but our experienced specialists have partnered with only top vetted sellers to offer authentic pieces that come with a buyer protection guarantee. Prices for turkish rugs differ depending upon multiple factors, including designer, materials, construction methods, condition and provenance. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $2,750 and tops out at $45,000 while the average work can sell for $3,400.

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