Emma Calley

Visiting a women’s co-operative carpet shop in Turkey

Intrepid Group. 

“You see this one?” Mr Solomon asked us, gesturing at a red carpet to his left, “it has around 600,000 knots.”

He strolled across the room and picked up a vibrant silk carpet, as gently as he would a baby. “Something like this, maybe one million or two million knots.”

Our jaws collectively dropped to the floor in disbelief. In a world of fast-fashion and mass production, the sheer amount of effort involved in the creation of one rug was astounding. Yet at the Desen Hali Co-operative in Bergama in Turkey, this is the way they had always operated.

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