Kirshehir Prayer Rug

This colorful prayer rug from the area of Kirshehir in northern Anatolia paints a repeat image of a courtyard planted with cypress trees. A prayer niche—or mihrab—is outlined in blue with geometric zig-zags, most probably an abstraction of a vine-scroll border. Carnations and other stylized flowers blossom from every direction. The field is dyed with Mexican cochineal, a popular dye-stuff in the Ottoman empire imported from at least the seventeenth century. Light-blue spandrels are perfectly paired with the field composition conveying imagery of a clear blue sky. In keeping with traditional Turkish prayer rug design from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the piece is framed by a multitude of narrow, colorful, striped borders.