Another Rabbit Hole - A Knitwizard

I’ve been doing a lot of sorting recently. I still have boxes of things from my mom, and now and then come across a box of mine that has been through several moves without being unpacked. This week I came across some photos from Turkey that included one of a spinner that I’d forgotten about.

I didn’t really focus on this wheel, I think because it was somewhat unusual compared to others I saw there. For the most part, the wheels are all wood and quite small. This one is more like the older style Indian Charka wheel.

Truthfully, I saw more people spinning with spindles than wheels, although it might just be where I visited rather than any real comparison. I brought back dozens of spindles that I found in antique shops and village markets, and I don’t know whether that represents fewer spinners using them, or a move to efficient wheels. I actually suspect that the ready availability of commercially spun yarn easily supplanted handspun yarn in many villages. Most of the rug weavers I met were provided with wool by the merchants who would contract for rugs and flat-woven kilims. Sometimes a group of nearby villages would set up their own commercial spinneries and dyeworks as a cooperative to eliminate the outside middleman.

(Left) Typical Anatolian spindle. (Above) Turkish spinning wheel.

But back to the photo. I found this in a box with my collection of headscarves like the one worn by this spinner. Although not very clear, you can see small decorative bobbles along the edge of the scarf where she has tied it over the top of her head.

The edgings, called oya can be made of needle lace, tatting, crochet, hairpin lace, or beading (sometimes beading is added to the other types). Occasionally I came across scarves decorated with “found” objects, like flowers formed from bits of foam rubber, or buttons.

I became obsessed with these scarves while I was living in Turkey, collecting both antique and new examples from across the country. Costing (at that time) from $1 to $5, it was easy to assemble a large collection for very little money, and I thoroughly enjoyed wearing them like a shawlette.

Historic photo of soldiers with oya scarves wrapped around their headdress (left) and contemporary example of man in historic style costume with multiple oya wrapped around his fez.

There are great historic photos from the late Ottoman period showing rebel soldiers with oya scarves wrapped around their fez. This was particularly true for the ghazi, bandits hiding out in the mountains and forests of Anatolia fighting along side more seasoned troops led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk during the Turkish war of Independence. Because the fez, the typical headgear, was bright red in color, it was thought that the oya helped disguise the soldier hiding among the trees — a sort of camouflage. Ironically, Atatürk outlawed the wearing of the fez around 1925 as part of his effort to modernize the country in the eyes of Europe.

Oya are stitched to the edges of scarves that are usually square in shape. The most accomplished artisans may work directly into the edge of the scarf with their needle rather than making a length of edging that is then sewed onto the scarf.

The scarves themselves are decorated with block printing (see photo upper left for typical wood blocks). While the oya may be color-coordinated with the scarf colors, and even represent the same type of flower design on the scarf (upper right), the oya colors are just as often unrelated to the scarf design and colors (lower left). One style of oya that is highly collectable are the oversized flowers, sometimes suspended from the edges of the scarf by covered wires (lower right).

The biggest part of my collection includes dozens and dozens of scarves edged with beaded oya. All of these belonged to one woman (who also made most of them herself) and were stored in the inlaid wooden box on the right. This is a very traditional way to keep these scarves, and the box itself, coming from Damascus, has its own value.

The largest component of my collection comes from a village in Cappadocia (left), a semi-arid region in central Turkey known for these unusual rock formations.

I found the collection in an antique shop in the town of Urgup, and was lucky to have come across them the same day that the shop owner had acquired them. He told me that they came from one old lady who had made most of them, and asked which one I wanted to buy. I couldn’t bear the thought that this collection would be broken up, and said that I wanted all of them and the box. He said ok, and then began counting the scarves. I tried (in my less than perfect Turkish) to make him understand that I wanted the whole collection, and he said he understood, but that I had to pay a specific price for each scarf and he wouldn’t set a lower price for the entire collection. In the end, he threw in the box for free after I had emptied my bank account and made him extremely happy. All I could think was that someday this collection needed to be intact and in a museum somewhere. I was unable to pry out of him the name of the village or the family, so my documentation is incomplete, but I have very carefully preserved this collection along with my dozens of other examples so that they can find a good home in the future.

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