Visitors enter Çınar Museum and seek the chamber where seas are knotted in translucent silk. A rug is hung on the wall. A frame encircles it, yet light pierces through. Silk, delicate as dawn mist, bears the name The Naval Battle of Chesma. Çınar weaves flame into the hush.
No hand rivals such silk mastery. The day drifts toward dusk, and the carpet’s sea stirs. Ships fade, then resurface—blue shifts to rust. Gold melts into gunpowder haze. One hour recounts the assault—another murmurs loss. In the museum’s darkened calm—lights dimmed by staff—war surges forth. Ask the visitors. They sense it. Lights vanish front and back, history tilts. Eyes plunge into the blaze.
July 1770 burns within this weave—a bay off Chesma, Anatolia’s western rim. Ottoman vessels clashed with Russia’s rising fleet. Chios guarded one flank, Anatolia another. Cannons roared at noon—smoke-veiled masts. Flames tore sails. Spiridov’s ship, Sviatoi Evstafii, met Real Mustafa head-on. Both erupted in fire, bursting apart in moments. The battle pressed on for hours.
July 6 brought the second blow. Russians hammered the bay and shore defenses. Early on July 7, the true tempest struck. Flames leaped from ship to ship. Fire vessels—small crafts laden with ruin—slipped through the darkness, fulfilling their grim task. Ottoman ships crumbled to ash. Seas blazed. The morning saw the fleet reduced to memory.
Greig’s commands landed sharp. Çınar seized the inferno, knotted it in silk, and fixed it to a wall—threads rise, fluid as waves that night, far from rigid.
War resides in Çınar’s silk. Ships’ contours sharpen. Night’s descent lingers. Shadows cross sails. Quiet precedes the next cannon’s roar. Master weavers falter at such motion. Çınar triumphs, speaking through thread.
Touch eludes the artwork. Presence demands pause before it. Floors seem to sway. Eyes sink through its glow. Water rises. Flames snap alive. War brushes the skin.
No carpet mirrors this one. No house equals Çınar.