NARRATOR: These are examples of later Anatolian carpets. But they also represent local, domestic traditions in Anatolia from earlier centuries. Walter Denny.

WALTER DENNY: The carpets woven in Anatolia in the 18th and 19th century are carpets of their own time, certainly. At the same time, however… one can always find in the designs of carpets from the 18th and 19th century a… direct relationship with the great classical carpets of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. These village traditions, an art that was always practiced in Anatolia by women artists, women weavers who were themselves the artists of the carpet as they wove it - these traditions passed from grandmother to mother, to daughter… over the centuries show carpet art as a living tradition always changing, but always self-consciously referential to the glorious past. And the spontaneity and the beauty that comes from people creating things for their own use, in their own society, in their own villages across the vast area of Anatolia.