ABSTRACT
In mid-March, 1908, a crowd comprised largely of women and children attacked three mechanized wool spinning mills in the Ottoman carpet-making center of Usak, carried off great quantities of stored wool, and destroyed the engine rooms. European appreciation for the knotted carpets of Asia Minor was hardly a new phenomenon in the nineteenth century. Art historians point to “Turkey” carpets in the paintings of fourteenth century European artists as proof these carpets were known, used and admired in the West not long after their development in Anatolia. Western demand for Oriental carpets had increased local wages and natural dye prices so that some Usak carpet makers succumbed to the temptation and used the less expensive anilines to enhance their competitive stance. The traditional carpet centers, beginning already in the early 1870s, had resumed the use of natural dyes.
