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   The culture of Turkish Rugs 
 
Before marriage, while mastering the textile arts, young girls 
  create the ceyiz, a dowry collection of beautiful things that will be useful 
  in their future homes. A girl might knit socks and create a heybe, a saddlebag, 
  for her husband to carry over his shoulder at the market in a public display 
  of her domestic skills; she will embroider towels and weave pillows, carpets 
  and wallhangings. Her new home will be decorated with memories of her girlhood 
  and family. As she looks at her kilims she will see herself and her sisters 
  and her neighbors woven together in affection. While creating the ceyiz in youth, 
  the weaver makes things that, if necessary, can later be sold to benefit her 
  new family.   
   
  Except at harvest when all hands are busy in the fields, a carpet is rising 
  on the loom in every  house, and when the sun is up, at least two women 
  are at work. Most weaving is done by girls  and  women between the 
  ages of 14 and 26 who form together into a special community of work within   
  each neighborhood of the village. They move fluidly in and out of each other's 
  homes with no need to knock. They come to visit and when they visit, they sit 
  and weave. Their fathers and husbands   are away in the fields or sitting 
  in the teahouse. 
   
  A young girl learns gradually in childhood by sitting beside her mother, her 
  sister, the other women of the village; she learns by watching and by absorbing 
  what is going on around her. The master  weaver must begin to learn early 
  and build the art into her process of growth. In this way, she learns the habits 
  of the hand that make the work easy rather than self-conscious, and thus gains 
  the ability for innovation and mastery.  
  
   
 
          
 
As young women move through the village, stopping to visit, weaving while they 
visit, carpets  accumulate the contributions of a wide circle of friendship. 
Sitting to weave a spell with her friend,   the visitor might create an intentional 
inversion in a minor motif or introduce a spot of surprising    
color. For the weaver it is a hatra, or a memento of the time a girlhood friend 
stopped by and  helped for a while. The carpets record the friendships and 
events of girlhood, and when the weaver leaves, taking the carpets of her dowry 
with her to the village of her husband, they will remind her of these times. 
 
     
 
 
 
  
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