The ‘Bird’ carpet is a type of handwoven carpet originating from Turkey during the 16th and 17th centuries, characterized by its distinctive artistic style and features. It was designed to meet the growing demand for export to Europe, with bird-like patterns as the main decorative elements. The intricate and unique designs, along with imaginative decorative concepts, made it a popular art piece among European high society.
Produced in Turkey, the ‘Bird’ carpet has a long history. Around 3000 BCE, during the Bronze Age, nomadic tribes living on the Anatolian plateau had already learned to weave woolen rugs for protection against wind and cold. In 1949, a fragment of a carpet unearthed from Mount Ararat was identified by archaeologists as the work of the Medians, ancestors of the Turks. In the late 13th century, when the great traveler Marco Polo visited Konya in the central southern part of the Anatolian plateau, he was highly impressed by the carpet-weaving craftsmanship there.
Traditional carpet patterns were intricate and complex, leading to long manufacturing times and limited craftsmanship, which could not meet market demands. As a result, designers opted for simpler pattern designs to facilitate quick and easy textile production, ensuring that the carpets produced would cater to the general public. It was against this backdrop that the ‘Little Bird’ carpet, simple yet elegant, vibrant yet rich and antique, came into being.
The design of the ‘Little Bird’ pattern carpet achieved great success and was beloved by the people of Europe. In the 17th century, Turkish ‘Little Bird’ carpets were widely praised for their vivid colors, themes, and patterns. People were willing to spend large sums of money to purchase these carpets, not to lay them on the ground, but to display them on tables or hang them on walls as art collections. The patterns on ‘Little Bird’ carpets were incorporated into the works of many famous European painters and frequently appeared in murals and oil paintings of the time. For instance, the ‘Little Bird’ carpet pattern on the murals in the Royal Palace of Munich, Germany, painted by the Flemish artist Pieter Candid, and an oil painting in the Petergof Monastery, painted by Varotari in the early 17th century, both feature the ‘Little Bird’ carpet pattern. These artworks provide valuable material for people to study and understand ‘Little Bird’ carpets. Compared to the world-famous Persian carpets and Tibetan rugs, the ‘Little Bird’ carpets from Turkey have their own unique weaving process and skills. The ‘Little Bird’ carpets are hand-woven, with weavers using high-quality wool from local specialties, spun into yarn, and dyed with juices extracted from the roots, stems, and leaves of wild plants. The main colors include Persian blue (a deep blue like a gemstone), Persian red, and grape red, with soft and pleasing tones, bold and gorgeous colors that remain unfaded for centuries. The carpet weaving process can be divided into the following steps: Step one, Warping: Intertwining perpendicular wool threads between the fixed upper and lower beams of the loom, these parallel threads are also called warp threads. The closeness of the warp threads is crucial for the final weaving density and quality of a hand-woven carpet; the smaller the distance between warp threads, the higher the weaving density, the longer the time consumed, and the better the quality. To tighten the warp threads, a flat piece of wood called a ‘heddle’ is generally used to separate odd and even warp threads, creating tension. Step two, Weft laying: Weaving workers alternately skip one warp thread and weave a wool thread from left to right, this horizontal thread is called the weft. This process is repeated eight to nine times to protect the knots that will form the rows of wool or silk threads on the carpet surface, ensuring that the hand-knotted points are secure and do not unravel. This is also the starting point for the later fringe-making process, traditionally known as ‘Kilim’ or ‘base’.Once a base of one to six inches is formed, begin by tying the first row of knots, continuing until you reach the second or third row of knot points. At this stage, alternately pass a weft thread through the warp threads, then use a comb-like metal tool to press down the weft and the several rows of knot points beneath it, achieving a tight and dense effect.
Step three, weaving: The ‘Little Bird’ carpet is renowned for its ‘Turkish knots’, and the quality of a carpet largely depends on the number of knots. The more knots, the smoother, finer, and stronger the carpet surface becomes, with the best carpets having hundreds of knots per square centimeter. Turkish knots are double and symmetrical, involving two warp threads per knot. The weaving method involves placing the yarn over two adjacent warp threads, wrapping the yarn ends upwards around the warp threads, placing the two ends of the yarn between the warp threads, and then looping the yarn ends around the warp threads to form a circle, standing up to create the carpet pile and forming the designed pattern. Repeat the process of passing the weft and tying knots to weave a base of one to twelve inches, and the tied knot points form a carpet surface approximately two inches high, completing the main part of the carpet. The remaining tasks involve weaving the fringes on the four sides of the carpet, then cleaning the dirt generated during the weaving process, removing excess fluff, airing the carpet in a well-ventilated area, and using a special frame to straighten any skewed warp and weft threads and edges. Finally, trim the surface with scissors to make the carpet surface flat, allowing the woven pattern to be more clearly revealed. The artistic features of the ‘Little Bird’ carpet: The basic rule of the ‘Little Bird’ carpet’s pattern design is to arrange dense Arabic floral patterns around the four edges of the carpet, forming a two-repeat decorative pattern. Some edge decorations feature flower branches in vases, with two branches dividing to the left and right, flowers and leaves interconnected, and small branches and flowers interspersed between the vases, forming a two-repeat arrangement with a characteristic of being spacious, elaborate, and intense. In the central part of the carpet, the eye-catching ‘Little Bird’ decoration is the main feature. The pattern composition in the center of the carpet is based on a square pattern unit with a plus sign as the basic framework. At the four ends of the cross shape of this framework, there are ‘Little Bird’ patterns; the four ends of the diagonal lines are flower patterns. According to related research, the ‘Little Bird’ pattern of the carpet does not represent a real bird but is composed of flower leaves extending from the flower patterns placed in the four corners of the square. Two opposing flower patterns extend two angular flower leaves, one leaf facing right and the other facing left, forming a pattern similar to a ‘Little Bird’. The design is meticulously clever and the craftsmanship is exquisitely skillful.At the center of a square pattern unit, a circular flower with four petals serves as the focal point, surrounded by four smaller floral branches to form a single pattern unit. Each bouquet is composed of distinct, symmetrical flowers, petals, and leaves, with the growth direction of the flowers clearly visible on the pattern. Short main stems support the circular flower decorations. At the base of the main stem branches, there are smaller stems, each bearing a flower and leaves. Following the growth habits of plants, these stems bend forward, growing towards the sunlight. Each stem supports a small, fan-shaped flower, with two upward-curving leaves at the top of each flower.
The decoration at the center of the carpet is unlike traditional carpets; it lacks corner flowers and sunbursts in its division and layout. Instead, it features a square pattern decoration unit based on a crisscross pattern, arranged in a continuous square formation, creating an orderly, horizontal and vertical, uniform, and neat decorative effect. It resembles a spring scene with birds and flowers in full bloom, full of vitality, contrasting with the free and easy effect of the carpet’s border, complementing and enhancing each other. The ‘Little Bird’ carpet pattern is simple and elegant, achieving an aesthetic balance with the pairing of bird motifs and floral decorations. The most famous design among these carpets is known as the ‘Holbein’ rug, named after the German master painter whose works often feature similar patterns. In addition to the ‘Little Bird’ pattern, there are also Arabic-style leaves and flowers, with a red background adorned with blue and yellow color patterns. From the late 16th century to the early 17th century, many designs emphasized floral pattern design, with colors typically chosen as red and yellow, accented with a touch of blue, becoming masterpieces of the time’s carpet creation. The ‘Little Bird’ carpet in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a typical representative. In Europe, there are two of the best ‘Little Bird’ carpet samples, one housed in the Berlin Decorative Arts Museum, and the other in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The ‘Little Bird’ carpet is developed and innovated based on the inheritance and absorption of Turkey’s long-standing tradition of hand-woven carpets. It possesses the characteristics of traditional carpet patterns, which are rich, complex, elegant, and noble, as well as a vibrant and fresh atmosphere. It is a typical artistic expression created by Turkish carpet weavers in the 16th and 17th centuries, encapsulating the essence of Turkish art and culture. It not only inherits the ancient tradition of Turkish carpet weaving but also absorbs the essence of folk art, making it one of the proudest artistic treasures of the Turkish national art.