Gördes

Gördes lies in the hills northeast of Manisa, in the inland country of western Anatolia. It became celebrated for carpets, especially prayer rugs whose pointed niches and carefully worked borders frame the field. The symmetrical Turkish knot is also known by the name of Gördes, linking the town to a technique used in many Anatolian weaving districts.

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Gördes was an important regional centre of carpet production. Surviving prayer rugs show the skill of its weavers and the variety of their designs; some use red or ivory fields beneath the prayer niche. These textiles travelled beyond the town, carrying the name of a small inland centre into the wider world of Ottoman craft and commerce.