International Home Textile Magazine – April’17

45
relationship with these towels. For a complete set
of towels was available and is still available which
consist of different towels for the shoulder, hips and
head. This elaborate arrangement was made keeping
the special Turkish baths in mind.
The towel would still have been the drab piece of
bath accessory if the Ottomans did not intercede.
They brought style, design and fancy weaving to
the towels with the help of their well-honed carpet
weaving skills in the 17th century. Their towel was
different in the sense that their 2/2-twill weave had
extra-warp loop pile. It actually means that apart from
the warp and weft of any other woven cloth their towel
also had pile or loops of thread standing up from
the rudimentary cloth.
The towels that we use all over the world actually
were first woven in modern day Bursa in the 18th
century. Weavers invented different techniques for
these towels and the towels known as `havly` at the
beginning are now known as `havlu`, which literally
means towel in Turkish. The specialty and much of
the fame of these towels naturally rest on the fact
that these towels were hand woven, which limited
their manufacturing to 3-4 towels a day.