NATURAL DYE TRADITIONS
Colors in Oriental Rugs
We know from past civilizations and legacies that it is possible to produce all the colors our eyes see with natural resources in nature. This is the most important part of our business — to make magnificent and eye-catching colors from natural materials, without harming nature and people.
Photo: Goethe's Colour Wheel, 1809The History of Color
In ancient times, artists invented the first pigments — a combination of soil, animal fat, burnt charcoal, and chalk — as early as 40,000 years ago, creating a basic palette of five colors: red, yellow, brown, black, and white.
By 4,000 BC, Egyptians were using lapis lazuli, a prized blue pigment. In the Middle Ages, madder was the most important dye plant in Europe, used to dye wool, linen, and silk in shades from pink to deep red. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's color wheel (1809) marked a pivotal point in understanding how colors relate to human perception and emotion — principles that oriental carpet weavers had long understood intuitively through generations of dyeing practice.
Photo: Natural dye carpet collectionDOBAG Project & Harald Boehmer
DOBAG is the Turkish acronym for "Doğal Boya Araştırma ve Geliştirme Projesi" (the Natural Dye Research and Development Project). The project aims to revive the traditional Turkish carpet weaving and natural dyeing traditions that had almost disappeared due to the introduction of synthetic dyes in the 19th century.
Harald Boehmer, a German chemistry teacher working in Istanbul, launched the project in 1981 in cooperation with Marmara University. Working with village women in the Ayvacık and Yuntdağ regions, the project trained weavers to use only natural dyes and hand-spun wool — reviving recipes that dated back centuries. The resulting carpets were certified natural and sold internationally, proving that tradition and commerce could coexist.
Photo: Ararat's colour chart carpetOur Colors
In the 1930s from the Agricultural Institute (Köy Enstitüleri) in Ankara, a vital work by Refik Korur was written in German: Die Färbepflanzen der Türkei, published in 1937. At that time, many empirical dye recipes from Anatolia were documented before synthetic dyes displaced them entirely.
Our color work builds on this foundation. Court-weaving workshop documents about natural dyeing for carpets surviving from the 15th–16th centuries from Mughal, Safavid, and Ushak workshops document dye knowledge that was already centuries old. We gather all dyeing materials at the highest quality and constantly check the quality of raw materials. As a result, our production is exclusive and in limited quantities.
Photo: Natural dyestuff — madder rootOur Dyestuffs
Madder Root (Rubia tinctorum)
Anatolia was probably the original home of madder. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all used it. It yields reds, oranges, and pinks depending on the mordant used, and is one of the most lightfast natural dyes known.
Chamomile
Various species of the Anthemis family (Compositae Asteraceae) yield warm yellows and golds. In Turkey alone, 50 species grow natively. Combined with iron mordant, deep olive and green tones are achievable.
Euphorbia Rigida
According to villagers and nomads in Turkey, various spurge species were used as dye plants in earlier times. They yield yellows and warm tones and were traditionally used before more reliable dye sources became available.
Walloon Oak (Quercus infectoria)
Because of its high tannin content, this oak has been important for dyeing and tanning for ages. The acorn caps are gathered, ground, and used as a mordant and dye source yielding dark browns and blacks.
Henna (Lawsonia inermis)
Known since ancient times as a dyestuff for skin and hair, henna also produces warm orange and brown tones on wool when used with appropriate mordants. As early as 3,200 BC, the Egyptians used henna and Indigo together.
Photo: Natural dyeing process, MalatyaColoring Wool
Our dyeing workshop is located in Malatya, a hub city in the Eastern Anatolian region of Turkey — one of the birthplaces of ancient civilizations, located in the west of the upper stretches of the Euphrates. The city has been settled since at least 3000 BC.
The dyeing process begins with mordanting — treating the wool with metal salts (alum, iron, chrome) that bond the dye molecules to the fibre. Each mordant produces a different colour from the same dye bath. After mordanting, the wool is immersed in the dye bath and simmered gently. The result is a colour that is part of the fibre itself, not a surface coating — which is why naturally dyed rugs develop a beautiful patina with age rather than fading harshly.
Photo: Natural wool colour rangeNatural & Undyed Colors
Not all colour in our rugs comes from the dye pot. Wool grows in a remarkable range of natural shades — white, cream, brown, grey, black, and every gradation between. We deliberately source fleece in multiple natural colours from different sheep breeds and regions.
Natural-colour wool requires no dyeing at all, eliminating that stage of the process entirely. The resulting rugs have an organic warmth and subtlety that dyed yarn cannot fully replicate. Combined with plant-dyed yarn, natural-colour areas create depth and contrast that is uniquely characteristic of traditional Anatolian weaving.