Amasya's weaving tradition is usually summed up by a short list: Merzifon cloth, the kilims of the Taşova area, Yassıçal broadcloth and the textiles of Gediksaray village. Two of these, Yassıçal çuha weaving and Gediksaray weaving, were presented in February 2025 at a ceremony in Amasya as products holding a geographical indication certificate. The certificate was obtained by the Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Governor Önder Bakan handed it to the chamber's board chairman, Murat Kırlangıç. In his speech the governor said the province had until recently held only four geographically indicated products, that the governorate's efforts had raised the number to twenty-four, and that they aimed to register the products in the European Union as well. The production behind the registration is manual work that has been carried on in home looms for generations, was at one point nearly abandoned, and was re-established through the efforts of local women.

What Çuha Is, and Where Yassıçal Lies

Dictionaries define çuha (broadcloth) as a fine, dense, nap-free fabric used for clothing and upholstery, and a rather soft one. In the Ottoman period the word largely meant woollen cloth. Thessaloniki, Istanbul, Bursa, Edirne and Damascus were the main centres of production. In Thessaloniki the weavers were Jewish communities who arrived from Spain after 1492, and most of the output went to clothe the Janissary corps and the other kapıkulu troops. Broadcloth suited both women's and men's clothing and was also used in the caps and cloaks of dervishes. Sources record that broadcloth was given as a gift to the people of Istanbul during the festivities of 1720, and that a broadcloth factory worked by machinery and water power opened in Beykoz in 1805. Amasya's çuha is separate from this state production: it is a far more local cloth made on village looms. The folklore researcher Petek Ersoy İnci points out that the sources describing Ottoman textile weaving do not establish a link between Amasya and broadcloth, and no documented information ties Yassıçal çuha to the wider history of Ottoman broadcloth.

Yassıçal is described as a village and municipality attached to the centre of Amasya province, and the weaving takes its name from it. According to local accounts, the cloth's history in Yassıçal reaches back about two and a half centuries. The geographical indication application likewise states that the weaving has an old history, that it holds an important place in Amasya's weaving-based economy, and that the link between reputation and geographical boundary is established for that reason. In some sources Yassıçal çuha is also called "çulhalık". The master instructor Hatice Bünyat explains that, for the people of the area, the word çulhalık means weaving wool. Indeed, on the same loom the cloth comes out woollen when wool is put in the heddle thread and cotton when cotton is; Bünyat's mother wove a wool bed shawl and a folk garment called öncek. Today the cloth is woven mostly with cotton thread. It is recorded that after a meeting at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in June 2022 the weaving also began to be called "çulha"; even so, the established name in Amasya's courses, exhibitions and official documents is çuha.

The Loom and the Weaving Technique

Yassıçal çuha is a weave in which the motifs are made by hand and the cloth by shuttle. The geographical indication bulletin defines it as follows: a weave produced on looms in Amasya province using coloured cotton threads, silk threads optionally, and the tahtalı technique. Four basic tools underlie the weaving: the warping reel, the warp mould, the heddle (güç) and the loom. The heddle is made by blacksmiths on commission; the others are made by Amasya carpenters from hornbeam for its durability and, according to the sources consulted, last thirty to forty years. On the warping reel the threads are made into skeins, and the warp mould fixes the width of the weave. Once the warp threads have been passed through the heddle and fitted to the loom, weaving is done with feet and hands working together; the pedals, called ayakçak, set the opening of the threads and the shuttle passes once to the right and once to the left.

The preparation described in detail in the bulletin shows why the cloth is laborious. Three-ply red cotton thread is wound onto a bobbin with a spinning wheel, and the cream-coloured weft thread is put on a separate bobbin. Every eighty heddle threads in the warp count as one skein, and the heads of the skeins are marked with coloured pompoms. The width of the weave depends on the number of skeins: ten skeins give a warp of fifty centimetres, eight skeins one of thirty-eight to forty centimetres. Shirts and sheets are woven from eight skeins, covers from seven. The warp is passed in turn through the heddles and the reed, the ends are evened up and tied to the loom, and the threads are tensioned. When the weaving is finished the cloth is cut from the loom with scissors, the fringes are tied, and the edges are cleaned and ironed.

What sets the cloth apart from other weaves is the tahtalı technique. Behind the reed the lower and upper threads are separated in threes, and six threads in total, forming the base of a motif, are passed under and over a board. Without pressing the pedal, the weaver pulls the flat board at the back towards herself and stands it upright, passes the three-ply red thread through the shed that opens, and pushes the board back. She then presses the pedal, throws the cream weft thread with the shuttle, and repeats the process three times. This movement is called "lifting the board". The geometric ornament that results is known locally as the tahtalı motif. According to Ersoy İnci, this technique was formerly used on the hem of the undergarment called tuman. One trainee recounts that the tahtalı tuman worn by brides beneath their dress, and the göynek (shirt) worked in full, were among the garments made of çuha.

Colours, Motifs and Uses

Red is predominantly preferred in Yassıçal çuha, and bright colours such as turquoise, blue, green, orange, yellow, purple and pink are also used. In the traditional method the threads are said to be coloured with root dyes and then wound onto shuttles with a spindle and spinning wheel. The cloth's patterns are known by name. Eminem, Süleyman, Mehmet Dede, tekke peşkiri, sinekli, deveci, kara viran, çift mekik, çavuş and tahtalı are the names listed by the master instructors and the geographical indication document. According to local tradition the Eminem motif expresses a mother's longing for her child and the Süleyman motif expresses determination. These interpretations rest on oral transmission and have not been confirmed by a written document.

In traditional use, çuha was woven as cradle covers, sheets, towels, shirts, tuman and shrouds. According to Ersoy İnci's observation, modern life has abandoned most of these uses: the göynek gave way to underwear, the shroud to plain cotton cloth and the towel to the terry towel, and the cloth's role in everyday life has largely been confined to the sheet. Today shirts, covers, piqué, living-room sets, bags and cushions are made from the same cloth. The dimensions of the weaves are not fixed and vary with the product. In a course held in 2019 the warp length was set at twenty-four and twenty-eight metres, and the cloth was woven in widths of thirty-five, thirty-seven, forty and forty-six centimetres. From the thirty-five centimetre strips came bags and runners, from the forty centimetre strips children's clothes, and from the forty-six centimetre strips curtains, piqué, tablecloths and adult dresses. A traditional göynek is thirty-nine centimetres wide and one metre long, and a cradle cover thirty-eight by forty centimetres.

Re-establishing the Looms

Yassıçal çuha had been fading into oblivion. In 2006, on the initiative of the Amasya Governorate, a çuha weaving course was opened in Yassıçal village, attached to the provincial centre, by the Amasya Public Education Centre. The idle looms were overhauled and identical ones were built. The course was run for a year by Yüksel Kanar. Kanar is remembered as the oldest living çuha weaver; she taught the weaving to her daughter Neşe Aşçı, her niece Hatice Bünyat and other women. When Kanar died at the age of 77, her daughter Neşe Aşçı took over the role of master instructor. Among Aşçı's trainees were her relatives Hatice Bünyat and Hamide Demir, and both in time became master instructors. According to the accounts, more than seventy women contributed to their household economies through production thanks to these courses.

In 2009, as the Public Education Centre director Erhan Çanakçı explained, çuha was woven on only five looms in the Amasya area. In the centre's two-storey wooden mansion, training, production, display and sale of local handicrafts took place. Neşe Aşçı, then thirty-six, said she had learned the work from her mother and grandmother, that a single piece sometimes took ten days, and that prices varied with the size and motif of the piece. It was recorded in the same period that the cloth had moved from wool to cotton-blend thread, while the traditional motifs were being used again in home textiles and clothing. Çuha is also counted among the local products most often bought by domestic and foreign visitors to the city.

In later years çuha weaving received the support of various institutions. In 2010 it was used in a European Union grant programme to support women's employment. In 2019 a çuha weaving course was opened in Amasya within the "Bir Usta Bin Usta" (One Master, a Thousand Masters) project run by Anadolu Sigorta, and Hatice Bünyat took on the instruction. In the course women were trained with a modular programme, and an exhibition was held at the end. In Ersoy İnci's field research the trainees said that three months was too short to learn this work, which demands patience at the loom. It is recorded that in the same course keten (linen) thread was used for the weft, polyester for the warp and cotton thread for the motifs, and that a winding machine was tried alongside the spinning wheel. This machine is the tool used to weave feritiko, the Rize cloth, and came to Amasya through a master instructor from Rize who was temporarily posted to the Public Education Centre in 2015-2016. The same study notes that the project's economic impact remained limited because its products did not reach retail.

In these years çuha also gained visibility in the fashion world. The geographical indication application for Yassıçal Çuha Dokuması was made on 22 December 2021, as a mark of provenance and in the name of the Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and was published in the official bulletin dated 15 March 2023. All stages of production must take place within the boundaries of Amasya. Inspection is carried out once a year, and at any time in the event of a complaint, by a board of at least five people made up of one expert each from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (which coordinates), the Union of Chambers of Tradesmen and Craftsmen, the Directorate of National Education, the Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism and the Public Education Centre. The board checks the suitability of the components, the production method and the use of the name and logo. In the programme "Halkın Sanatı" (The People's Craft), broadcast on a news channel on 6 May 2023, the designer Dilek Hanif used the tahtalı technique in a waistcoat.

In May 2024 an exhibition titled "Bir Elden Bin Ele" (From One Hand to a Thousand) was opened at the Yassıçal Village Life Centre in memory of Yüksel Kanar. Set up in the village school under the Ministry of National Education's Village Life Centre Project, the centre brought çuha weaving back to the village. The exhibition was opened by Meral Doruk, wife of Yılmaz Doruk, then governor of Amasya. Neşe Aşçı and Hamide Demir work as Yassıçal çuha master instructors at the Amasya Maturation Institute. At the February 2025 presentation Aşçı said çuha motifs would now be seen on bags, duvet covers, lampshades and clothing, and Bünyat said the work that began with a single loom had gained momentum with the registration.

Gediksaray Weaving

Gediksaray is a village in the Göynücek district, twelve kilometres from the district centre and thirty-four from the centre of Amasya. According to the master instructor Remziye Yalçın, Gediksaray weaving, which women wove in the village in the past, is a colourful kind of weaving. Cloth of one hundred per cent cotton is used, and the motifs include the mountains of Amasya and the tahtalı. These motifs are said to have been found in young girls' dowry chests. Yalçın said that by making different designs and working the motifs into clothing they would keep the craft alive. In the promotional reports both weaves are regarded as a cultural heritage woven by women on the loom, kept in chests, and passed from mother to daughter.

A detailed production account and history of Gediksaray weaving has not been published as extensively as that of Yassıçal çuha. For that reason nothing definite can be said about the age of the village's weaving, the structure of its loom or its uses; the information above is limited to what the master instructor said at the promotional event. In a doctoral study cited by Ersoy İnci, the textiles of Gediksaray village are listed, together with Merzifon cloth, Yassıçal çuha weaving and the kilim weaving of Taşova's Çakırsu village, as examples showing that Amasya is rich in weaving. According to the same study, Amasya has also been known since the 16th century for silk production and for its patterned fabrics called "Benek-i Amasya".

Amasya's Other Weaves and Geographical Indications

Weaving in Amasya is not limited to these two cloths. The craft list of the Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism mentions carpet and kilim weaving, noting that it continues in the Yassıçal municipality and Sarıyar village. In the Merzifon area, towels (peştamal), sheets and tablecloths are woven on looms with a whip mechanism. The making of sacks, kilims, saddlebags and rope from hemp or goat-hair yarns, called kırnap, lives on mostly in the Gümüşhacıköy area. At the Amasya Maturation Institute master instructors now work in kilim and silk carpet weaving as well as çuha weaving.

A geographical indication officially recognises that a product's name and qualities are tied to a particular place; the production method, the materials used and the inspection procedure are put in writing. For Yassıçal çuha the practical result is that the conditions under which the name "Yassıçal çuha dokuması" may be used now have a clear framework. Ersoy İnci notes that when a handicraft is commodified its recognition grows, but problems may also arise in preserving its traditional dimension, and she writes that this balance is on a knife edge.

Chronology

2006: Opening of a çuha weaving course in Yassıçal village by the Public Education Centre

2009: Report that çuha was being woven on five looms in the Amasya area

2010: Çuha weaving used in a European Union-supported grant programme for women's employment

2019: Çuha weaving course in Amasya within the "Bir Usta Bin Usta" project

22 December 2021: Geographical indication application for Yassıçal Çuha Dokuması

15 March 2023: Publication of the application in the official bulletin

May 2024: "Bir Elden Bin Ele" exhibition at the Yassıçal Village Life Centre

26 February 2025: Presentation of Yassıçal çuha and Gediksaray weaving with the geographical indication certificate

Sources

Academic studies

  • Petek Ersoy İnci, "Gelenek, Geleneğin Dönüşümü ve Kültür Ekonomisi Bağlamında Geleneksel Bir El Sanatı: Çuha Dokuma", Uluslararası Türk Dünyası Bilimsel Araştırmalar Dergisi, 4(1), 2023, pp. 19-34

Official sources

  • Türk Patent ve Marka Kurumu, Coğrafi İşaret ve Geleneksel Ürün Adı Bülteni, 2023/145, 15.03.2023 (Yassıçal Çuha Dokuması application) webim.turkpatent.gov.tr

Other sources

  • Anadolu Ajansı, "Amasya'nın Yassıçal çuha ve Gediksaray dokumaları coğrafi işaretle tescillendi", 26 February 2025 aa.com.tr
  • İletişim Başkanlığı, "Unutulmaya yüz tutmuş Amasya Yassıçal Çuha Dokuması görücüye çıktı", 17 May 2024 iletisim.gov.tr
  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, Handicrafts page
  • Amasya Maturation Institute, Hand Weaving Field page

Online sources