Kilim is one of four major Anatolian flat-woven rug types; the other three are cicim (pronounced “jijim”), zili and sumak/soumak. These flat-woven rugs were for the vast majority of rural or nomad origin; although the weavers intended them to be functional (since produced for their own use), many of these rugs have extraordinary decorative characteristics, both in colours, in motifs and in design.
The design can be approached from two opposite angles: there are the tens of individual motifs, their meaning and changing forms (an analytic approach); and there is the cohesion of these motifs, how - together- they have a global meaning (the synthesis). In this way, the rug delivers a message, and weaving becomes a written language of illiterate women (considering their situation less than a century ago).

Closely related to the world of symbolic motifs and the global message carried by a rug, is the purpose of the weave, sometimes according to successive periods in the lifespan of an Anatolian woman. In that aspect the most important are: kilims woven before marriage for her future husband and home, kilims woven for her children, and the kilim woven to be used in her funerary ceremony and bestowed to the mosque, they all display different characteristics, the first and the last being the masterpieces of the weaver.

Note that the first four pictures in this sub-gallery open sub-galleries with many more pictures.