Over-dyed carpets were recently added to Anthropologie's rug collection and have long been around at ABC Carpet. As a huge investment. I had to go in and find out Turkey's take on this trend. Once we relocated the store on our second trip to the Grand Bazaar, Recip from Güney Carpet recognized us and was happy talk carpets. (post edit: I have now read up more on over dyed carpets and discovered that Istanbul was one of the first to do this, reclaiming stained carpets)
He had informed us that he sends many over-dyed carpets to Scandinavia countries right now. Since I am in love with Scandinavian design, this bit of information thrilled me.
Recip explained the process as:
1) shave the carpet.
2) sun dye the carpet.
3) apply and over dye the carpet.
They use vintage / old carpets for the process. The dye is not as dark as I saw on carpets @ Anthropologie, but that could merely be the lighting / photo. I am not sure. And although this is a beautiful carpet and I like that I can see the original design through the dye, I might like the colour to be even darker.
I also loved the colours and thin stripes of this carpet:
And the design and colours of this carpet:
But I was drawn mostly to the patch carpets, over-dyed pieces patched together. Gray, dark purple and yellow have been my colour motif for a year+. I especially like the pink block with black design in this carpet pictured below. This carpet had it all.
A very old, unique patch carpet. This one was special for its smaller antique pieces and different piled patches.
Over-dyed gray, turquoise, yellow and pink.
Over-dyed large blue gray patch carpet. Very interesting!
The shop, Güney Carpet, beautiful woven art. Recip has three locations in the Grand Bazaar. The one shown below, another one that we had walked by and declined a sales persons' offer to look at their carpets. Remember, I wasn't there to buy? I just wanted to learn about the over-dyed carpets. So we had to find this one particular store. Carpet sales people LOVE to show off their inventory, it is after all, woven art. I do not like to bother people, but felt obliged to let him unroll a couple ... Can you see the layers of carpets on the floor ... hand selected for us to admire, de-shelved and spread out for our viewing.
And the third larger store, with even more inventory. At first Recip's assistant hauled a couple carpets from here to us, but then they decided it was better for us to go there. Recip told us that he had been in San Diego for a carpet convention. He was then contracted to mend a few carpets, which is his forte. He told us he could not believe that people let their dogs sit on the carpets...he had lots of mending to do. I didn't tell him I had a dog and three cats. I didn't even want to remind myself of that.
Oh look, what is this? What is in that package?
oh that is really interesting to read about, something i never think to ask is how rugs like that are made!
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