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Armenian rag and carpet art

Along with sculpture and miniature painting, carpets are one of the best manifestations of the distinct culture of the Armenian people.

The Armenian arts took their own national features in the Middle Ages due to the development of architecture, music, literature, fine and applied arts (jeweler, pottery, rug and carpet making). Back to the Middle Ages, rug became a profitable commodity that brought a world-wide fame to the Armenian rug-making art and still is very popular in the world market. Some remnants of carpets have been discovered at the graveyard of the village of Artik, Armenia, (XIV - IX B. C.). A fragment of a carpet reminds of the so-called jejim-carpet with the swastika symbolising water and snake. It was for this motif that foreign scientists called the Armenian rugs dragon-rugs. In Yerevan, at the Karmir Bloor (VIII - VII B. C.) clews of dyed wool and various types of woolen fabrics have been discovered. The ornaments of murals, the compositions and the harmony of red and blue colors of Arin Berd (Yerevan) have almost been transferred to the rug making of our days.

According to Volkmar Gantzhorn, an expert in Armenian carpets, all carpet ornaments can be reduced to a few basic forms, which, in their turn, are traditionally found in Armenian culture since the 3rd-1st millennia BC.

Armenian carpets are ornamented "texts", in which the sanctified symbols of our ancestors' beliefs, worships and religious notions, coming from the depths of millennia, have been preserved.

The Armenian carpet adheres to traditions. Imitation and representation of the same ornament-ideogram in countless variations of style and colour comprise the basis of the creation of every new carpet. In this respect, the characteristic feature of the Armenian carpet is the exultation of variation, especially in colour.