Almost anywhere you point your camera in Turkey, there is something beautiful to capture. Carpets, rich in reds and oranges and blues, hang outside shops and cover cafe benches and tables. They are made even more stunning when hung against stone walls and ancient wooden doorways.
In Turkey, it is the men who sell the carpets and the women who make them. Carpet shops are everything from small stands alongside roads to posh showrooms with an army of salesmen in business suits. No matter the shop, piles of carpets reach from floor to ceiling. The shop owners always welcome you in, and someone immediately brings you tea or strong Turkish coffee as carpet after carpet is rolled out for you to examine. They can tell by the way your pupils dilate and by the slightest movement of your mouth what your tastes are in colors and types, and quickly tailor what they roll out to these perceived preferences.
Carpet salesmen have to be the best salespeople in the world. You do have to wonder about the economics of the carpet business, though. There are so many carpets and so many shops; you would think that would drive prices down, making them affordable. Some are, of course, but not the good ones. We looked at carpets (for fun) that were upwards of $30,000. These, of course, are the high-end, hand-woven, silk carpets that take two women and 8 months to weave. Backbreaking work—apparently, women have more choices now and don’t care to sit for 8 hours a day, months at a time, tying a billion double knots per square inch. Turkish carpet weaving is becoming a dying art. Perhaps the carpet weavers are tired of being paid an absurdly small amount for their labor while shop owners make a killing. Maybe they can make more at McDonald’s these days. Perhaps the carpet weavers do make a decent wage, and the cost reflects their time. No idea really, but in the end, we aren’t bringing any $30,000 carpets home, as good as those salesmen were.
