Guide
The Textile Museum in Yeşilyurt follows cloth from the raw material to the finished garment. Silk, cotton and wool open the sequence, then weaving, sewing and pressing, and the display widens at the end into carpet weaving and shoemaking. Set pieces stand in for the trades that once surrounded the industry: a yarn seller, a cloth seller, a shoemaker at his bench.
One room holds the sewing machines, Zetina, Anker and Singer among them. Elsewhere the display makes a point about regional dress that visitors tend to remember: according to the museum, the length of the şalvar worn by women here was enough to tell which district the wearer came from.
The museum still produces as well as exhibits. Courses in clothing and carpet weaving are run on the premises, and the pieces made in them are sold in a small shop on the entrance floor.
It occupies the former municipal headquarters of Yeşilyurt, bought and converted by Mahmut and Ahmet Çalık, who founded and ran one of the textile firms that grew out of Malatya. Yeşilyurt lies about 10 km from the centre of Malatya and public transport reaches the museum.
