Until the mid-1980s, it was still possible to find nomadic women in Turkey, whether Yörük or Türkmen, using square, camel-leather tablets, çarpana, to weaving narrow bands on a ground loom, as distinct from the normal ground loom with heddle and beater-in. The bands themselves were widely used for swaddling babies (kundak bağı), garters (diz bağı), sack straps (çuval kulpu), sash ties (bel bağı), apron ties (önlük bağı), and, for the trellis tent, stays for the roof wheel (çandı ipi). They incorporated lively and attractive patterns. Like many traditional crafts, this skill was ignored, and even looked at askance, in the educational system of the new, modernising Republic, and with the decline in nomadism it has now all but disappeared. Of the few who did pay it any attention, Kenan Özbel included it in his series of booklets on handcrafts for the Halk Evleri,Footnote ¹ and Leonore Kosswig, whose fieldwork in the 1960s was published, with analyses, in scholarly articles;Footnote ² she later inspected the historic bands preserved at the Topkapı Sarayı.Footnote ³

Șerife Atlıhan, a professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts of Marmara University, has taken up the challenge of documenting not only the designs, but the exact technique used in weaving these bands. Having already trained in textile design and weaving, she began to learn to use tablets from a 93 year old villager, Cennet Kara, in 1987, who, she found, knew only two patterns. Realising the urgency of further research, she acquired a method for recording the weaving process for specific designs from Șahin Y.Yağan, and proceeded to collect material on field-trips in western Anatolia from 1988 to 1996. To this she added information from regional and metropolitan museums in Turkey, as well as the Ottoman collection in Dresden. Born in a village in Muğla province, she was well able to empathise with rural weavers, and the result of their trust is evident here.

After defining her terms, she sets out to give an historical resumé of the technique from ca.3000 bce in Iran, and of its distribution throughout the world from Japan to Iceland, giving the necessary references, and recognising the fundamental work done by Peter Collingwood,Footnote ⁴ besides later collectors such as Gerhard Foitl and Fred Mushkat. She then explains the simple range of equipment required, and the basic principles of tablet weaving, before setting out the method of the pattern draft which she thereafter uses for recording the successive steps in weaving a given pattern. The next sixty pages are then devoted to the range of motifs she learned in Anatolia, including single- and double-faced weaving, switching tablets in groups, diagonals in reversible patterns, the implications of leaving some tablet holes unthreaded, the use of supplementary wefts, raised patterns, weaving with the tablet corners raised, weaving with five-, six- and eight-hole tablets, and even weaving two or three bands simultaneously. From p.55 to p.95 she describes progressively more complicated techniques. All this is accompanied by fifty precise pattern drafts detailing the number of tablets, the colours of the yarns, the direction of yarn lay and the sequence. Coming to the end of the woven band, she then describes the methods of finishing warp tails in a short excursus on plaiting or braiding types, and provides a section on the various uses of the ties in traditional life, explaining that the sash tie is worn so that it can be unwound and used for lashing firewood or other loads when the need arises. She then devotes a further hundred pages to a catalogue of thirty-five historical examples from the Topkapı Sarayı Museum, some of them dated as early as the fifteenth century, three from the İstanbul Belediye Museum, ten twentieth century bands from rural Anatolia, and one, in velvet pile, from Uzbekistan. Each item is illustrated by clear photographs she took herself, a pattern draft, and where necessary supplementary drawings.

All the technical section is set forth lucidly, as though explaining the procedures to a student, and one recognises the author's years of experience as a teacher. Every analysis is based on her own experience, in weaving each pattern herself before drawing the draft. The commentary to the catalogue specimens points out its salient characteristics in a clear and economic way. Generally the photographs show the whole object as well as a close-up sharp enough to show the lay of the warp yarns. The coloured pattern drafts are admirably clear, and allow one to grasp some relatively complicated procedures fully: ideally these should be approached with a set of tablets and yarns. The juxtaposition of palace and village (or nomad) specimens allows the reader to recognise, in some cases, a close relationship between the two. The book does not include her recent work at Dresden, which is destined for later publication, nor specimens from the ethnographic Museum at Ankara, which was sadly uncooperative. There is no doubt that the author has succeeded in providing a comprehensive and very useful fund of exact information on this craft, which should be a fundamental reference for many years to come. It is hard to imagine how the analyses could be bettered. The book is well produced.

In its initial approach to the technique, the text sensibly follows the sequence laid down by Collingwood quite closely, and unsurprisingly, drawings which show the same movements or devices resemble his. The pattern drafts, though, are plainly a great improvement on his, and the general combination of colour photographs with analyses definitely so. The author wisely confines herself to her own experience – the only exception being the Uzbek belt – and one understands here a practical reluctance to venture into unfamiliar traditions. Nevertheless, to anyone familiar with, say, Bakhtiyārī tablet weaving,Footnote ⁵ a comparative dimension seems to be lacking, which is, surely, indispensable for understanding the origins of the Anatolian craft. This remains to be explored, with the salient question of why, when the Türkmen of Khurasan do not use tablets to weave, those in Anatolia do. It is remarkable, too, that some of the Anatolian motifs resemble those used by the Türkmen of Khurasan, though those are woven on an orthodox ground loom. In the section on the rural use of bands, too, there is no mention of the symbolism of the motifs, nor of the bands themselves: for the Alevi of Western Anatolia the waist band represents much more than a practical object.Footnote ⁶ I suspect that the author knows this, and wonder why she omits it.

In the preliminary pages the author tends to labour the obvious, and there is some unnecessary repetition. The section on etymology, pp. 22–23, would be better condensed, and should refer to Persian dictionaries, when the word çarpana is evidently of Persian origin. Although the technical instructions are generally very clear, there is one lapse, in a failure to explain adequately what is meant by the ‘direction’ in which the warps are threaded through the holes. (p.40): one is left to understand by inference. To be fair, Collingwood's (pp. 57–58) are no better in this respect. The catalogue section is generally unambiguous, though it would be useful to know the direction of wrapping for silver-covered silk in kılaptan (p.168, 27a) for comparison with other regions. The illustration of bands used in a topak ev (the Anatolian trellis tent) is unfortunate, as it is wrongly rigged, in an exhibition.Footnote ⁷ A full Turkish glossary would be useful.

The translation is generally clear and easy to read, though occasionally current technical terms, such as back-strap loom, or crupper are not used, and some, like ‘sack handle’ could be improved (as sack strap). References to two works by Crowfoot, mentioned in the text, are absent from the otherwise comprehensive bibliography, as are some more recent works.Footnote ⁸ Of several misprints, which should be corrected in the future imprints which must follow, the worst is a consistent appearance of ‘Caucuses’ instead of Caucasus, presumably due to a misleading dictionary. These, though, are all minor blemishes on an original, meticulous, and most impressive achievement. This is clearly a book intended primarily for weavers, though it should give pleasure to anyone interested in textiles.