LADIK CARPET

handwoven floor covering usually in a prayer design and made in or near Ldik, a town in the Konya Plain of south-central Turkey. Ldik prayer rugs have either a high, stepped arch design or a triple arch with a dominating central portion. In a separate panel above or below the prayer-niche motif, a group of five or more flower stalks project upward from a band of crenellation. Although a few date to the late 18th-century, most Ldik carpets were made in the 19th century. The term column Ldik has been applied to prayer rugs that, regardless of their actual places of origin, share a motif derived from a 16th-century Ottoman court design, consisting of three arches of unequal height supported upon slender columns and surmounted by a panel as described earlier. Most column Ldiks have been found in Europe and presumably were made in the Balkans in the 17th and 18th centuries. A less sophisticated, more recent type, with bolder colouring, comes from the nearby city of Konya.