Mid-20th Century Turkish Rugs

77459, vintage Turkish Kilim rug with Two Grey Hills style 04'10 x 08'01. With its bold expressive design, incredible detail and texture, this handwoven...

From Rug & Kilim’s vintage selections, a 3x12 hand-knotted wool runner from Turkey bearing striking nomadic influences. The 1950s tribal piece showcases traditional motifs on the...

From Rug & Kilim’s vintage selections, a 3x12 hand-knotted wool runner from Turkey bearing textural nomadic appeal. The 1950s creation showcases a union of geometric repetition &...

From Rug & Kilim’s vintage selections, a 3x14 hand-knotted wool runner of uniquely bright hues for nomadic inspirations. This 1950s tribal piece from Turkey showcases traditional...

A vintage hand-knotted Turkish Oushak area rug from the 1960s with distressed low wile on cotton foundation. The rug has a central medallion on a sand-colored plain field framed by a...

A beautiful, simple vintage flat-woven/kilim runner rug from the 1970s, woven with un-dyed natural wool in Central Turkey featuring a banded design in cream and brown. It is in goo...

A vintage Turkish rug. Finely hand-knotted with even medium wool pile on cotton foundation. Very good condition. Sturdy and as clean as a brand new rug (deep washed professionally). ...

This vintage Kirsehir rug features a long and luxurious traditional design style. Four majestic medallions, motifs, and symbols are aligned and well compl...

From our vintage selections, a 3x12 hand-knotted runner bearing clean nomadic aesthetics. This particular 1950s tribal piece showcases traditional motifs neatly decorating the fi...

Maden is a stunning pile of woven wool that can transform your room into traditional and ethnic interiors. Knowing their history while turning your home aesthetically gives so many p...

From Rug & Kilim’s vintage selections, a 3x10 hand-knotted wool runner bearing striking nomadic influences. The 1950s tribal piece showcases traditional motifs with latch hooks on th...

A finely hand-knotted vintage Turkish carpet from the 1960s featuring an Art Deco Chinese design of a central floral motifs and scrolling vines arranged loosely to look like a medall...

Featuring a gorgeous wool shag of this Vintage Turkish Anatolian Tulu that showcases a muted and captivating earthy tones of beige and cedar brown. This...

This is a hand-knotted vintage Turkish area rug. The rug features a floral medallion design in a field decorated with floral motifs. It has low distressed wool pile on cotton foundat...

This vintage 4×8 Tulu rug is a new addition to Rug & Kilim’s mid-century tribal curations. Hand-knotted in wool, it originates from Turkey circa 1950-1960. This provenance is known for thick, lush pile and archaic designs like this rug’s play of off-white with brown. Its pattern is simple but rich, and continues from the field’s lattice pattern into a single border. Keen eyes will further note vibrant old-world motifs and admire a playful complement they lend the design. Its a comfortable, warm piece from a long tradition known for its craft. This vintage Tulu shag rug...

They do not come with inserts. Linen in the back, Zipper closure. Dry clean recommended.

A delicious vintage 5x10 Art Deco rug originating from Turkey circa 1960-1970, joining Rug & Kilim’s mid-century Pasha Collection. Among our handpick...

This vintage Art Deco rug was handmade in Turkey circa mid-20th century. It is in the style of Zeki Muren, a multidisciplinary Turkish artist, known for his...

Hand-knotted in Turkey originating between 1960-1970, this vintage mid-century modern rug is the latest to join our Mid-Century Pasha collection, celebrating Turkish icon and multidi...

This handmade vintage Turkish Oushak area rug was hand-knotted in the 1960s with distressed low wool pile on cotton foundation. The rug has a central medallion on a field decorated w...

A finely hand knotted vintage Anatolian wool rug from Ladik, Konya in beautiful pastel tones of salmon pink, sand, sage green and beige. The centerpiece of the rug is a large, intr...

A vintage Turkish Anatolian carpet from the mid-20th century with cotton highlights.

These authentic flat-weaves (Kilims) from Central Turkey were handwoven by Nomads to be used as floor coverings in their tents and winter homes. They were made to use for everyday li...

It does not come with an insert. Linen in the back. Zipper closure. Dry cleaning is reccommended.

Nr. 788 - Hand embroidered carpet or fabric by young Turkish nomad girls for their wedding trousseau. Flat wave kilim: this is not a true rug, but a fabric made by young Turkish noma...

A vintage Turkish Anatolian throw rug handmade during the mid-20th century. Measures: 3' 6" x 4' 11" 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...

Pillow Cover is made from a hand woven cotton fabric, woven in Anatolia, Turkey. It does not come with an insert. Cotton in the back. Zipper closure. Dry clean is recommended.

A vintage Turkish flatweave Kilim carpet in gallery format handmade during the mid-20th century with a striped pattern in pastel colors. Measures: 6' 5" x 12' 6".

Hand-knotted in wool originating from Turkey circa 1960-1970, this vintage mid-century 5x9 Deco rug belongs to Rug & Kilim’s expansive Mid-Century Pasha collection that celebrates th...

A handmade mid-century 'Tulu' (Turkish word for 'thick piled') runner rug from Konya in Central Turkey. The rug is made of 100% wool, therefore it is very soft and comfortable. Measures: 4.2 x 8 Ft. These simple rugs...

A charming vintage Turkish Tulu rug with long haired mohair pile that is soft to the touch. This lustrous and silky piece has an embossed lattice pattern t...

Pillow Cover is made from a hand woven cotton fabric, woven in Anatolia, Turkey. It does not come with an insert. Cotton in the back. Zipper closure. Dry clean is recommended.    

Pillow cover is made from a hand woven cotton fabric, woven in Anatolia, Turkey. It does not come with an insert. Cotton in the back. Zipper closure. Dry clean is recommended.   

Vintage Kilim runner, Narrow Kilim, minimalist design striped kilim, Vintage kilim runner Keivan Woven Arts rug EN-P13442 , country of origin / type: Turkey / Kilim, circa Mid-20th C...

50845, vintage Turkish Oushak rug with Swedish Farmhouse style. Emanating timeless appeal and neutral hues, this hand knotted wool vintage Turkish Oushak rug exhibits a nostalgic cha...

Handwoven in wool, a vintage kilim rug of the 1950s in panel style featuring a striped pattern playing warm and cool in beige and brown tones for a simplistic yet elegant repetition ...

Mid-20th-century Turkish square Rug in red Measures: 2'4" x 2'4".  

A finely hand-knotted vintage Turkish carpet from 1960s featuring a central medallion in slightly washed out purple, blue and brown against a plain field in soft, glowing beige as we...

A finely hand-knotted vintage Turkish carpet from 1960s featuring an elegant medallion design. The rug has even low wool pile on cotton foundation. It is heavy and lays flat on the f...

This beautiful and simple flat-woven rug is made of natural un-dyed wool in various shades of brown and beige with a touch of madder dyed terracotta red. Measures: 4.7 x 12 Ft. We c...

Vintage Turkish Tulu carpet, Rug EN-3306, country of origin / type: Turkey / Tulu circa mid-20th century. Measures: 4'2 x 4'8.  

Featuring a gorgeous wool shag of this Vintage Turkish Anatolian Tulu that showcases a muted and captivating earthy tones of ivory and cedar brown. This remarkable rug displays a ser...

Subtle Turkish Anatolian floral pattern rug from the 20th century Measures: 2'6'' x 5'3''.

A hand-knotted vintage Turkish area rug. The rug features a floral medallion design in a field decorated with floral motifs. It has low distressed wool pile on cotton foundation, is ...

Hand-knotted in wool originating from Turkey circa 1950-1960, a rare vintage mid-century pictorial rug in beige and brown colors. Enjoying a tasteful abrash in the background and fie...

A vintage Turkish Anatolian rug in runner format handmade during the mid-20th century. Measures: 2' 7" x 7' 4" 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...

Handwoven in wool originating from Turkey circa 1950-1960, a vibrant vintage Balkan flatweave rug enjoying nomadic sensibilities entering our Kilim & Flatweave collection. The field ...

A vintage Turkish accent rug. It was hand-knotted in the 1960s and all-over floral design. Low wool pile on finely woven cotton foundation. Sturdy and can be used on a high traffic a...

Mid 20th Century Turkish Anatolian rug Measures: 2'10'' x 5'3''.

Hand-knotted in wool originating from Turkey circa 1960-1970, this vintage mid-century rug belongs to Rug & Kilim’s growing Mid-Century Pasha Collection—celebrating the Turkish icon ...

A sophisticated rug in the Turkish Collection that will surely leave you in awe upon laying your eyes towards this piece. Milas has a stunning yet engaging design that is complemente...

Through its simplicity, this will make your contemporary space more elegant with this neutral-toned Anadol rug from our Vintage Collection. Ornate borders with Anatolian symbolic des...

A handmade mid-century 'Tulu' (Turkish word for 'thick piled') runner rug from Konya in Central Turkey. The rug is made of 100% wool, therefore it is very soft and comfortable. These simple rugs...

Hand-knotted in wool from Turkey circa 1950-1960, a 4x6 vintage rug from a bold Turkish designer commemorated in Rug & Kilim’s Mid-Century Pasha Collec...

Originating from Turkey circa 1960-1970, a vintage Art Deco rug from a commemorative Turkish workshop entering Rug & Kilim’s coveted Mid-Century Pasha Collection. The drawing enjoys ...

A one-of-a-kind vintage hand-knotted French-Aubusson inspired Turkish area rug from the 1960s with low wool pile on cotton foundation, in powder blue, sand beige and madder red. The ...

A simple yet beautiful cotton kilim/flat-weave runner rug in cream with occasional, very slight dark stripes, handwoven in two separate pieces then hand-stitched by the nomadic tribe...

A vintage Turkish flat-weave Kilim small room size carpet handmade during the mid-20th century. Measures: 7' 2" x 11' 1".