YURUK RUG

also spelled Yrk, floor covering handwoven by nomadic people in various parts of Anatolia. The Balikesir Yrk rugs of western Anatolia have diagonal patterns and a maze of latch-hook motifs carried out in red and dark blue with touches of ivory. They are highly reminiscent of and sometimes confused with those Balochi rugs that abjure the use of brown. Rugs from eastern Anatolia, many of them Kurdish rugs but classed as Yrk, show a wide range of rich and unusual colour shades. Their hexagonal and lozenge patterns are frequently sharpened by the rug's construction, the knots being tied in such a manner (offset) as to produce diagonal rather than vertical rows. The small prayer rugs are nondescript in design and often dismissed as Anatolian. As with other nomadic rugs, the wool is apt to be more glossy than that in town products and the pile longer and more recumbent, owing to the use of more shoots of weft between the rows.