About Turkey: Carpets and rugs

Most visitors to Turkey leave with much more than they arrive with, and at some point you're bound to be dragged into a carpet shop. Although it's quite a hard sell, it's also entertaining and takes place over a number of glasses of tea. So rather than going in blind; it pays to do a little homework first.

It might save you some disappointment when you find out that your floss silk carpet is actually made of cotton spun with crushed fibers from the cypress tree. It will also arm you with plenty of trivia. did you know that when unrolled, the thread from one silk cocoon can stretch up to 25,000 meters?

There's also some inside information on telling artificial from natural dyes (such as chamomile, buckthorn and walnut, and a pretty good way of ensuring that you buy a hand-made carpet). To the uninitiated the geometric patterns can appear as a foreign language, i.e. difficult to interpret, but there's a key here so you won't get your Ying & Yang mixed up with your Fertility symbol. A good carpet won't come cheap, and there are some top tips on how to look after it here.basically do it the old way, no vacuums and no washing machines.

www.about-turkey.com

Back to reviews