When Marco Polo crossed Anatolia in 1270 on his journey to the Far East, he expressed that the people of this area “weave the choicest and most beautiful carpets in the world.”  Sivas, the town known as Sebasteia in ancient times, is the capital of the province of the same name, and has long been of considerable importance as a production center of knotted and hand-woven carpets.  Because of the painstaking, fine knotting and its thick, fairly short pile of high-quality wool, Sivas carpets are among the most precious in Anatolia.

The best Sivas carpets like this one, combine the fine weave and sophisticated drawing found in antique Tabriz carpets, with the soft color palette usually associated with Oushaks.

An extremely elegent field in sage green is framed by a multicolored, almost modernist border design borrowed from the Turkish kilims of the 19th century.