Rugs of Kurdistan
Xalî û kilîm
Kurdish weaving carries its own alphabet of motifs: eyes against harm, stars for happiness, combs, scorpions, trees of life. See the rugs the weaving towns are known for, read what the archive holds on them, and knot one of your own.
Knot one of your own.
Give the loom a name, pick a motif, the dyes and the shape, and it knots the rug from the bottom up, row by row, the way a rug is woven. Every name makes its own rug.
The loom finishes every rug the way the passages quoted below describe Kurdish rugs: abrash, the bands where a dye's shade shifts, coloured strands through the web ends, dark overcast sides and a knotted fringe.
The meanings are those commonly read in the kilims of the region; weavers' own readings vary from village to village.
Woven in Kurdistan.
Where they are knotted.
The towns and tribes whose names the rug trade gave to Kurdish weaving, each with a rug from the loom in its spirit.
“A high-class democracy.”
What a rug book of the last century said of Kurdish rugs, as the passages were posted in the archive's General History channel.
Every city, a rug.
Each city in the archive, knotted on the loom with the star for a place, in the dyes of the age the archive first records it. Pick one to open its entry.