CARPET WEAVING IN ARMENIA
Lena Nazaryan
Hetq Online, Armenia
September 17, 2007
Armenian Carpet Prices Rise by 40% on the International Market
The director of one of the few carpet-weaving units in Armenia, Mkhitar
Simonyan, said that carpet weaving was on the verge of extinction
in Armenia. Aida Simonyan ltd., owned by the Simonyan brothers, is
located in the Gegharkunik village of Chambarak. The unit has 150
workers, but they only manage to gather around 40 carpet weavers,
and that too only in the winter when people come to work there just
because they have nothing else to do.
In the summer, they prefer to cultivate land and raise animals. A
carpet weaver’s average monthly salary is 30,000 drams. There are
virtually no other jobs in Chambarak.
"We are unable to promote carpet weaving. There are tens of unemployed
women in Chambarak who can weave carpets, but they don’t come here
to work. We cannot pay them enough to motivate them to come and not
regret investing their time in this work," said the company director
Mkhitar Simonyan.
This carpet weaving unit opened in 2006, but has only managed to get
by and is on the verge of closing, according to management. Their
main client is Tufenkian Trans Caucasus, which exports 90 percent of
its carpets to the United States and sells the remaining 10 percent
in Yerevan, where the buyers are exclusively foreigners. Because of
fluctuations in the dollar-dram exchange rate, the exporting company
raised prices by 40 percent. The dollars brought in from carpet sales
abroad were no longer enough to cover the expenses accrued in drams
locally. The cost price of each carpet was higher than its selling
price. Prices for other carpets in the international market have been
quite stable over the past several years, while Armenian carpets have
grown more expensive by 40-50 percent.
"The foreign market is flooded with carpets – cheap, expensive, good
quality, bad quality – all kinds. If the buyer does not decide to
buy Armenian carpets specifically, then they can find other carpets
of the same quality but at a cheaper price. How can we compete? The
client does not agree with the price we set, but we have no other
choice. We have to either raise prices or shut down. But if we raise
prices we may end up without clients and have to close down anyway,"
concluded the unit director.
That is what happened to Sahakyan Carpets, founded in the 1990s,
which sold its equipment to Tufenkian Trans Caucasus and left the
market once and for all in 2005.
A number of other small carpet-weaving units were dealt the same
fate. Tufenkian Trans Caucasus has been operating in Armenia since
1994. Three units continue to work in Armenia thanks to orders from
this company – one each in the villages of Chambarak, Lchashen and
Karmir. These units do not have other clients. The carpets are all
hand-woven. They are brought to a central office in Yerevan from the
units, where they undergo final processing and are the exported to the
United States, where they are sold in shops in a number of places –
Dallas, Chicago, New York and California.
Arman Grigoryan, director-in-chief of Tufenkian Trans Caucasus,
noted that carpet sales by the company had halved over the past three
years. "We would produce and export around 800-900 sq m on a monthly
basis two or three years ago, sometimes even 1000 sq m. Now the volume
of our production and export is about half of that. Now we produce
and export around 300-400 sq m a month," said Arman Grigoryan.
Tufenkian Trans Caucasus is looking for ways to lower the cost price
of carpets. They are searching for new suppliers are importers of
wool and thread. "We used to think earlier that we should buy wool
yarn from our villagers, but that would be a luxury for us now,"
said Grigoryan. Mkhitar Simonyan, the director of the Chambarak
carpet-weaving unit, was confident that they could produce carpets by
themselves in a condition ready for sale, but that they could never
succeed in selling them abroad. "Our carpets sell abroad because they
bear the Tufenkian brand. We and others like us can’t break into the
international market and sell our carpets at even half the cost price,"
said Simonyan.
Carpet Weavers of Artsvashen Jobless The carpet weavers of Chambarak
are mainly women who migrated there in 1992 from Artsvashen. During
the Soviet period, there used to be a branch of Haygorg, the state
carpet company, in Artsvashen. After the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the invasion of the Azeris, the residents of Artsvashen
migrated to Chambarak, Vardenis and Abovyan. The two-story Haygorg
building was torn down and the storeroom, full of hundreds of carpets,
was ransacked. The women of Artsvashen learned carpet weaving from
their mothers and grandmothers. Many of them had worked for Haygorg
for decades. "It was shameful for a girl or woman in Artsvashen not
to be able to weave carpets. Even if they didn’t work for Haygorg,
they would have a weaving stand at home and make carpets," said Irina
Ghalechyan, a former resident of Artsvashen and carpet weaver.
In 1992, the people of Artsvashen left all they had and moved to
the area in Armenia closest to them, the village of Chambarak. They
came with the hope that they would be able to return in three days,
but they have remained for 15 years. "Haygorg was operating until
the very last day. When they would start shooting we would hide in
the basement. As soon as the shooting would stop, we would get out,
get to our work stations and continue weaving," said Irina. When the
village was lost, there were around 750 households or 3,000 residents
there. The government gave loans to the people of Artsvashen, with
which they bought the houses of the Molokans in Chambarak.
"People used to really value carpets before… A carpet used to be like
an open book in ancient times, it used to have real meaning. Now it
is just a thing of beauty and wealth. Carpets used to tell stories,
but not everyone could read them. My ancestors used to weave from
memory. A long time ago, people would pay in gold for the carpets of
Artsvashen, even though many of them were woven by illiterate women,"
said Irina. Very few women from Artsvashen work in the carpet-weaving
unit at Chambarak. They prefer to work in fields or orchards; carpet
weaving is no longer a means to make a living. These women no longer
want their daughters to learn carpet weaving.
One of the characteristic features of Armenian carpets is their
symbolic representation of the sun, stars, animals, plants, people,
dragons, birds and snakes.
This is in contrast to Arabian, Persian or Turkish carpets where they
are represented as they are, without symbolic patterns.
"In the old days, people would hang carpets on the wall. That’s how
it would be in almost all houses.
Carpets had the same significance to Armenians that icons had for
the Orthodox Church. Carpets were considered sacred. My ancestors
believed that a carpet could bring success and prosperity to the
house. Obviously, one couldn’t put a carpet like that on the floor
or table. They would weave carpets for the floor which would not
have any symbols representing God or light. But they would not hang
carpets on every wall. They would leave it for the main wall of the
house, where they would also hang their guns and pictures of their
ancestors," said Irina.
One of the best-known symbols on Armenian carpets represents
the Dragon. Carpets with dragons on them are called vishapagorg,
or Dragon Carpets. The Dragon is not considered good or evil in
Armenian symbology; it is an element that can be both good and
inexorably evil. The Dragon is considered a protective symbol for the
home. Dragons are woven into the edges of a carpet but never in its
center. This is to say that dragons protect the edges of the world,
but the center is almost always occupied by the Sun.
"Our grandfather dealt in the trade of ancient carpets his whole
life. He used to say that a cow, a silver belt and a carpet were all
equal as riches and held the same value. In my grandfather’s time,
women used to weave carpets from memory, which is why each carpet
was an irreproducible piece of art. Now, even if the carpets are
hand-woven, they are mass produced and are all the same because the
women look at pictures to weave them," said Mkhitar Simonyan.
Armenian carpets used to have different names in the past –
Vishapagorg, Tavriz, Bayazet, Vaspurakan, Tzaragorg, Zangezur,
Gharabagh, Dvin, Shirak, Lori, Taron, Ani – according to corresponding
patterns and places. Now, carpets no longer have names, they are just
given numbers.
"In the 90s, many Armenians sold the carpets that they had for
pennies. We lost a part of the history of our art in that way,"
said carpet weaver Irina Ghalechyan.