The Hereke carpets are Turkish
handmade carpets produced in the town
of Hereke in Kocaeli province. Their
origin begins with the establishment
of the Hereke Imperial Manufacture in
1841 by the Ottoman sultan, Abdülmecid
I (1823-1861) who requested the
workshop to produce the textiles for
the royal Dolmabahçe Palace on the
Bosphorus. Gathering the best artists
and carpet weavers in the Empire, the
Emperor’s vision was to produce
textiles of the highest quality and
artisticity, testified by the unique
patterns and fine state, which they
still retain to this day. They were
given as gifts to the royals, noblemen
and statesmen who visited the
Dolmabahçe and due to the strict
restriction on their production, it
was almost impossible to trade Hereke
carpets until 1890s. With the fall of
the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the
master-weavers who once worked for the
Sultans began once more to produce the
carpets to carry the tradition of the
Imperial carpets. Hereke carpets
typically are large in scale, made
with wool or camel hair on cotton,
silk on cotton as well as silk on
silk, which are finely knotted. The
precision of their double knots, known
as Ghiordes knots, allowed clear,
precise delineation of patterns, as
well as capturing the subtle
harmonious blend of colours. To this
day, the Hereke carpets and the
tradition and style of the Ottoman
Empire that they carry, serve as a
fascinating vignette into one of the
most ostentatious periods in the
Turkish history.
Forming fantastical patterns with
their lavish use of sparkling gold
thread and beautiful silk, Oriental
carpets like Hereke carpets were seen
as the furnishings of paradise. In the
?Qur’an?, paradise is depicted as a
land of eternal life and happiness
where one enjoys the Fruits of the
Garden while languorously reclining on
a carpet embroidered with splendid
patterns. The fact that it was a
carpet that decorated this paradise
landscape of unending happiness, free
from the travails of this world and
religious proscriptions, is the very
evidence of the extent that carpets
were cherished and venerated within
the Arab culture. In the 18th and 19th
centuries, some oriental carpet
workshops moved away from abstract
patterns, choosing instead to depict
subjects taken from classical prose
and poetry. Scenes of hunting, courtly
life, or mythical subjects were woven
in wool and silk, with more finely-
woven carpets resulting in more
intricate and accurate images. The
master weavers of Persia were
particularly adept at depicting
intricate, naturalistic scenes,
sometimes looking to Western works of
art for design inspiration. The
pictorial motif such as the image of
the ‘Tree of Life’ represents
eternal life and is an essential theme
in mythology and religion. The
paradise on the Oriental carpet is
depicted as the appearance of the Tree
of Life, the blooming flowers, and the
singing of beautiful birds on the rich
land. The trees, symbolising the
connection between heaven, earth and
the underworld, grow from the base of
the field and continue to fill the
rest of the carpet with leafy branches
that are filled with flowers or birds.
(Reference: Jonathan M. Bloom, Sheila
S. Blair. Islamic Arts. London;
New York: Phaidon Press, 1997; Halil
Inalcik, Suraiya Faroqhi, Bruce
McGowan, Donald Quataert, Sevket
Pamuk. An Economic and Social
History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-
1914. Cambridge University Press,
1995; Oktay Aslanapa, Ayse Fazlioglu.
The Last Loop of the Knot: Ottoman
Court Carpets. Istanbul: TBMM
Milli Saraylar, 2006.) -MK
- (MH.1)
|
