This carpet, with its prominent single niche, is in a style often referred to as a prayer carpet. Since this implies that its specific function was for use during prayers, and this may not always have been the case, modern usage prefers the term 'single niche' carpet.

It is a woollen rug, with a niche in dark blue at the centre, filled with a straight floral stem and a border of flowering sprays in colours. The spandrels are covered with a diaper of flowers. The whole is surrounded by six borders of varying width containing groups of flowering plants and detached blossoms in colours on a white, brown and yellow ground.

It was probably made in the 19th-century, in the Kula region of western Turkey. The basic layout of the design may be compared with that of the Ghiordes carpets [645-1894 & 409-1880], which also have a single niche design, but the effect is quite different. It is possible that what we now see as several shades of yellow were originally more distinct and possibly quite different colours which have faded.

[information combined from old gallery 42 label, and Jennifer Wearden's carpet binders]