In the international exhibitions, Azerbaijanis and Turks introduce the carpets with Artsakh and Armenian old patterns as Azerbaijani and Turkish carpets. Director of the “Karabakh Carpet” LLC, Sevak Khachatryan, told in an interview with us that he often meets similar cases in international exhibitions. He says that they are so ignorant that by introducing the Armenian carpets as Turkish or Azerbaijani, they are unable to explain the meaning of the patterns, “I have seen many carpets with Armenian inscriptions on them.
Still, from Soviet years they were consistently buying Armenian hand-woven carpets from different villages of Artsakh, bartering them, taking some of the carpets as a trophy during the war, and now introduce them as a part of their culture. Sadly, we have a lot of work to do in this aspect, and they spend huge amounts of to be represented by Armenian carpets.”
Nelly BABAYAN
