How Our Artisan Turkish Towels & Pestemal Are Made

Artisan weaving Pestemal

Who Are The Artisans?

Our artisans in babadagFrom Left to Right:  Süzan, Özcan, Durmuş, Sezai, Osman, Remzi.

These 6 artisans are the ones who loomed your pestemal. Osman himself has more than 45 years experience hand-looming towels.

How The Pestemal Are Made

When comparing materials of higher end pestemal towels, we learned that ring spun cotton makes all the difference in the quality. Many towels are made from the scraps of plants like ours. These are shipped in locally, directly from Denizli.

turkish_cotton_yarnAfter they get the rolls, they are loaded up onto the 50+ year old looms, and the artisans use a pattern to create the main “body” of the towel. This process takes 30 minutes per pestemal.

Take a closer look at one of the pestemals being loomed below. It literally gets added on layer by layer.

We made it! Here's a shot of one of our pestemal being loomed by an artisan

Meet Remzi! He’s one of our artisans who showed us all the steps to making a pestemal towel.

Showing us how the pestemal are made

Thirdly, our artisans spend ~20-25 minutes per towel to roll the tassels in the towels. It takes about 23 minutes to braid a single towel.

On the left you can see it unbraided. The right shows a braided tassle.

braids

Lastly, Tansu & Sebahat do a thorough check of each towel to ensure it meets standards. Here, Tansu inspects the towels.

Tansu inspecting the towels

And, of course, the towels have to be presentable! Here Sebahat irons the towels and gets them ready for sending out.

Sabuhat ironing the pestemal

 

Shop our pestemal here

1 thoughts on “How Our Artisan Turkish Towels & Pestemal Are Made

  1. Pingback: Artisan Handloomed Turkish Towel- Pestemal ACTIVE

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