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Western Anatolia

Cushion Cover (yastik), 18th or early 19th century

This yastik ("pillow" in Turkish) was made with a flatwoven back to be stuffed and used as a cushion. It owes its design to an urban Ottoman art form - a standard species of 17th century silk velvet cushion cover with a round central medallion enclosed by four curved, serrated leaves containing stalks of hyacinth. This type of cushion cover has panels with arched divisions at its ends and no side borders at all.¹  These features are transmitted to this yastik and account for its omission — rare in intact pile weaving - of surrounding borders. It is not the weaver's imitation of a velvet design, however, but the ways in which she has departed from her "luxury model" that give this yastik its singular force. Her medallion is an octagon with a lobed center that, even if irregular, is based on a gul of Turkic tribal origin. The surrounding "leaves" are drawn with irregular contours and spiny protrusions that enliven them and may be attempts to evoke fantastic creatures, such as the dragons and phoenixes that appear on early Anatolian "animal" carpets. In place of the crimson and metallic accents of urban velvets, the weaver has used wool colored with the bold hues of traditional Anatolian village dyeing. Her adaptations have yielded a powerful synthesis of court, tribal, and village art.

J.B.

1. A velvet yastik in this design, part of the Edwin Binney, 3rd, Collection of Turkish Art, is now in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, 1985.300. It is reproduced in Donald King, Imperial Ottoman Textiles, London, Colnaghi, Spring 1980, pi. 26, p. 49, and in Edwin Binney, 3rd, Turkish Treasures from the Collection of Edwin Binney, 3rd: 1981 Supplement to 1979 Catalogue, San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art, 1981, no. IOA, pp. 14—15.