Konya Runner

This long yellow ground piece hails from the area east of Konya in central Anatolia. Two columns of octagonal ‘Memling guls’ are drawn in a rainbow of vegetal colors spanning vibrant madder red to medium indigo blue and a double-dyed green. The so-called ‘Memling’ design was named for the fifteenth-century painter Hans Memling who depicted rugs of this pattern in his paintings. As such, it is one of the oldest Anatolian weaving designs and is defined by its distinctive outline of latch-hooks and octagonal contours. These devices when stacked in columns replicate themselves within the form of the negative space. While the primary guls in this piece employ eight-pointed stars in their centers, the secondary gul-shapes are defined by the colorful diamond elements.