Patterns and Motifs
What the Pirot kilim even at first sight gains by are ornaments, their form, kind and colour. Just the colouring is decisive in determing the age of the kilim, too. And the names of patterns, their form and colour point to the great age and unaroidable influence of other cultures and milieus as well as to their mutual permeation.
The elements oft these ornaments built in the Pirot kilim gain new compositional forms thanks first of all to the personal peculiarity of women – weavers of Pirot. The ornaments on the Pirot kilim are always geometrical: a stylized bird, flower, turtle dove or an object from the immediate surrounding of the women weaver.
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One and the same pattern appears in more colours by turns. The most used patterns were geometrical: a rhomb, stylized “mirab” (kind of patter), little dining-tables, an amulet, German boxes and bombs, French candies, chests (“kuveri”); and figurine ones: a lizard, flame, small bird, scorpion, stagbectle, a branchy tree, turtledoves in several variants, roses in several forms, too, pomegranates, wreath – a cross section of flowers braided into a wreath, a flower (carnation, peansy, mother in law, tongue, a tulip, a rose …). The ornaments are not static, they have always been transformed and enriched continually.