Kurdish women art

Kurdish minder-yastik ( cushion to sit on ) fragment
East Anatolia (Northern Kurdistan )
1850 - 1875
85 x 65 cm
Article by Sonny Berntsson

The Kurdish tribes ( Ashiret ) textiles are seldom found in shops.
If you travel into the centre of East Anatolia you can find the most autentic and distinguished rugs and flat-weaves. But...you need luck to find them.
In the provinces Elazig - Tunceli - Bingöl - Mush there are Kurdish villages where the women never have produced textiles for dealers. All textiles have been produced for their own family and have a function in their traditions, for example as a marriage-portion.
For that reason pattern-examples ( wagireh ) are never found in this area.
The Kurdish girls have to learn, and try, to weave the old patters from their family-traditions. The results are often very charming with typical improvised pattern.
This yastik is probably a result of a young girl´s try to learn a pattern that she never have woven before.

The wool is of very high quality. The colours, common in the middle of 19th century, are also of high quality.
The Kurdish rugs are allways well-done with fine rows of knots between 3 - 5 wefts of natural brown wool.

A minder-yastik is a cushion to sit on, mostly in profane situations. It is normaly more square compared to yastiks for the backs.

ERZURUM, Northern Kurdistan
Yastik
1880 - 1900
58 x 100 cm

Article by Sonny Berntsson
This yastik origins from a Kurdish village somewhere east from the city Erzurum and is probably made by a Kurdish woman.

Pile: Glossy wool of high quality.
Warp: A coarse 2-tread grey wool.
Weft: 2 light-brown in wool.

The colours are very bright in red ( madder ), blue (indigo ), red-brown, brown and yellow.

Pattern: The diagonal-cross, with flowers in the ends, were common in yastiks both in Central Anatolia and in Sivas-area during the 19th century, and it has been borrowed from there into this yastik.
From the 16th century it was rather common with religious flower-symbolism in the kurdish Empire.
Carnations is one of the flowers in this symbolism.
The rest of the ornaments/pattern are traditional in the area between Erzurum and Kars.

The back of the yastik ( not on photo ) is red-brown.
Probably madder on different natural-brown wool because of the abrashes.