Ankara, Turkey, January 9, 2006--Turkish carpet fashion has changed significantly in recent years; moderization looms.
As you stroll through carpet stores--especially those located in urban areas such as Istanbul and Ankara--you will see that their windows are nowadays decorated for the most part with "contemporary" carpets and kilims, the designs of which complement contemporary interior design, according to the Turkish Daily News.
You can choose almost any color you want since carpet producers take into consideration various trends in relation to style. If you want to create more tranquil spaces in your house, select a carpet without a pattern or featuring just a simple design.
As the popularity of the modern approach in carpets continues to grow, traditional Anatolian folk carpets and kilims--those rare, precious, hand-woven pieces of art--are slowly disappearing from shop windows.
Although this does not affect their price or value, the classical, traditional carpets of Anatolia are now considered to be tourist souvenirs.
Zahide Thornahin, a lecturer in the Carpet-Kilim Program at Erciyes University's Kocasinan School of Higher Education, said hand-woven carpets are losing their appeal due to increasing interest in more fashionable machine-woven carpets.
Thornahin says the traditional, eye-straining labor involved in making hand-woven carpets makes them more expensive to create than the mass-produced, machine-made carpets. "Hand-made carpets, which are gradually becoming products for export as well as tourist souvenirs, are mostly preferred by people who value the meaning of motif and design and, of course, the wealthy," she said.
Noting that the motifs and designs used in hand-woven carpets are traditional, Thornahin said: "Traditional hand-woven carpets have certain features in terms of motif and design, thus we want to preserve their artistic value. Each motif has a symbolic meaning, such as the 'eli belinde' (hand at the waist) motif, which symbolizes woman and indicates fertility, while the 'koc boynuzu' (ram horn) motif represents man and power. We don't want the meaning of these motifs to disappear."
"The man of today is more stressed and tired; therefore, more relaxing designs and pastel colors are preferred. People need more relaxing carpets, and machine-made pieces fulfill this need. The colors used match any curtain or wall, and that's why they are more popular."
