SİNDİRGİ YAĞCİBEDİR RUGS

Rugs woven in the province of Balikesir and its counties, towns and villages, as well as around Bergama, are referred to as Yagcibedir Rugs. The most famous place among these is Sindirgi.

The rugs woven here have a specific character with their colours, patterns and quality and are referred to with the name of the place and the weaving clan. 

The temporal origins of Yağcibedir rugs in the area of Sindirgi are not definitely known. The oldest rugs that managed to survive to our modern day are 100-150 years old.

There are no older examples known at museums. It is only possible to state that local weaving started at the time of the Turks’ arrival at the region and became widespread in the 19th Century.

The material of Yağcibedir rugs is wool. The wool is obtained from the sheep bred by each family and hand-spun to provide yarn.

Applying the Turkish knot technique, two wefts are tied after each knot. The weaving is performed with wooden kirkit, blade and scissors. Kirkit is made of maple to ensure due rigidity and weight (1). 

Quality in Yağcibedir rugs is measured with the siyirdim calculation and the number of knots and patterns. Siyirdim is the colloquial name for the number of knot per line. Two weavers can complete 50-60 siyirdim a day. A prayer rug of 120x200 cm contains around 1000-1050 siyirdim.

The public regards the weight of the design yarn in kg is also a measurement of quality. A knot is tied over two warps and the denseness of the knots tied over two warps defines the quality.

Among merchants, quality is measured with the number of knot passing through 10x10 cm (1 dm²). Yağcibedir rugs of today have around 40x40, 45x45 knot per 1 dm².

Red, brown, dark blue, black and white are the dominant colours in Yağcibedir rugs. The colour red is obtained from pigments of walnut and synthetic dyes, the colour black from pigments of walnut and the colour blue from the root juice of patience dock and sour dough. The colour white is used in its pure form (2).

Patterns in Yağcibedir rugs are created either by heart or by alternating designs from rug to rug without using a design paper.

Each rug is made up of sections from the outside to the centre colloquially known as giyi suyu, geniş su and mihrab.

Each of these sections is ornamented with separate patterns. For patterns and their symbolic meanings in Turkish mythology, see. (3)

Sindirgi is one of the rare centres where natural materials are used among the public for modern rugs in Anatolia and Yağcibedir rugs are one of the highest-quality rugs of Anatolia with a great contribution to the Turkish economy.

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