Antique Turkish Rugs between £0 and £0
Hand-woven Anatolian floor pieces, knotted pile rugs and carpets alongside flatwoven kilims, made for village and household use, for export, and in the case of prayer rugs for prayer itself.
What Are Antique Turkish Rugs?
They're catalogued by place, not by maker. Titles name a weaving town or region, then a design and a colour, and often the dimensions in centimetres. Ushak and Oushak lead by a wide margin, followed by Kayseri, Konya, Bergama, Ghiordes, Sarkoy and Milas. The maker field is empty across the whole archive.
The form you'll meet most often is a place-named village or town rug of small to medium size, described by its design and its ground colour. "Design" appears in 151 of the titles, "prayer" in 122, "carpet" in 94 and "village" in 70. Kilims are a large second population at 103 titles.
Beyond those, several smaller groups run through the category. Prayer rugs with a single directional niche overlap with both pile and flatweave. Village and regional weavings from central and eastern Anatolia bring in Yahyali, Taspinar, Dosemealti, Yagcibedir, Yuruk and Karapinar. Silk and 'art silk' town weavings from Kayseri and Hereke make up a small distinct slice.
Sizes run from mats and bag faces around 60 x 60cm to carpets over 4 x 5 metres. Dealer dates span 1750 to 1960, with the mass either side of 1900 and the 1920s alone accounting for 132 listings. Some titles hedge in prose, so an early date can stand for a bracket rather than a year.
Where The Range Widens
Size and named origin do most of the work. Ushak and Oushak carpets occupy the whole top of the range, and the big ones do it emphatically: 385 x 575cm and 369 x 595cm both appear, along with pieces simply called 'Enormous'. At the other end sit a Malatya chuval face of 65 x 57.5cm and small village mats. Titles that give no origin at all, just 'Antique Turkish Rug' or 'old Turkish village rug', cluster low.
Age separates the field too. The 1750-dated Ghiordes and Ladik prayer rugs, an early 19th-century Dazkiri village rug and an 18th-century Ottoman embroidery all sit well above the middle, while 1920s to 1950s kilims and rugs fill the lower half. Since 132 listings fall in the 1920s alone, early dating is what stands out.
Colour and material shift things as well. 'Scarce' turns up in 17 titles, and green, yellow, pink and ivory grounds recur among the higher listings, as does 'unusual design'. Silk appears in 21 titles, with Kayseri, Hereke, Bursa and workshop-signed silk rugs high in the range and Kayseri 'art silk' prayer rugs holding the middle.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for turkish rugs between £0 and £0, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Ushak and Oushak is the name that turns up most across dealers on Sellingantiques, ahead of Kayseri, Konya and Bergama.
The Antique Turkish Rugs between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Kilim
- A flatwoven rug with no pile, woven on the loom rather than knotted. It names 103 listings in the archive, a fifth of the whole category.
- Prayer rug
- A rug with a single directional niche, or mihrab, at one end. This is the largest design group on Sellingantiques, with 'prayer' in 122 titles.
- Ground or field
- The main colour area inside the borders. Ivory, green, red, sky blue and pistachio are all named in titles, and a scarce ground colour lifts a piece.
- Runner
- A narrow rug much longer than it is wide, 26 titles, a few of them over five metres.
- Saf
- A prayer rug with several niches side by side, written in titles as 'multi niche'.
- Cicim
- A brocaded flatweave technique, named in Konya, Malatya and Bergama listings.
- Woven in two parts
- A wide kilim made as two narrow loom widths and joined down the centre.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Turkish weaving towns appear most often?
Ushak and Oushak between them are the single most-named origin, with 'ushak carpet' alone in 40 titles. Kayseri, Konya, Bergama, Ghiordes, Sarkoy and Milas follow.
Rarer origins turn up once each: Antep, Mut, Kemaliye, Hakkari, Erzurum, Kars, Aydin, Bursa, Monastir and Dazkiri, plus a Thracian kilim.
How old are most of the rugs listed?
Dealer-entered dates run from 1750 to 1960, with 427 of 483 listings carrying a clean year. The bulk sits either side of 1900.
The 1920s account for 132 listings, more than the 1880s, 1890s and 1900s combined. A further 29 are dated only '19th century'.
What is a Sarkoy kilim?
Sarkoy accounts for 22 titles, and the flatweaves carrying that name are usually described by a banded design, meaning a horizontal stripe layout across the field.
'Banded design' appears in 12 titles, so the layout and the origin travel together.
Are Turkish kilims a big part of the category?
Yes. Kilim appears in 103 titles, about a fifth of everything listed, which makes flatweaves the second population after pile rugs and carpets.
They cover a lot of ground: prayer kilims, banded Sarkoy pieces, cicim brocade from Konya, Malatya and Bergama, and chuval, heybe and mafrash bag faces sold as rugs or wall pieces.
How many Turkish rugs sell on Sellingantiques?
Around 44 are listed a year, handled by 30 different dealers. That's wide dealer coverage rather than two or three specialists holding the category.
The archive runs to 483 listings, from small bag faces to oversize carpets.
Do any unusual one-offs turn up?
They do. An Irish Donegal carpet woven in a Turkish Oushak design, a framed and signed miniature Hereke silk rug, and angora mohair Siirt blankets have all appeared.
So have a Konya yastik cushion face, a complete set of Yuruk saddle bags, a mounted fragment of a Konya long rug given as first half 18th century, and an 18th-century Ottoman embroidery.
One Ladik prayer rug carries a date woven three times into the rug itself, 1285 in the Islamic calendar, or 1868.