The technical specificities of Karabakh carpets

As for the technical specificities of Karabakh carpets, motley and bright colours, botanical and zoomorphic images and portrait-style are characteristic properties. Their harmony of colour arose from a combination of taste, the artistic ideas of local masters and the vividness of the plants used to produce the dyes. Delicate but strongly woven carpets with a neatly trimmed surface, regular corners, unfading colours and woollen wefts were considered the best ones. Karabakh’s weavers were famous in their field for their matchless taste design, selection of ornamentation, symmetrical placement of paired elements and selvedge and dye making etc. By which they made unique decorative art works of their carpets. The carpet set (a carpet and accompanying side rugs) typical only of Karabakh among the Azerbaijani regions, is an especially notable seller. It consists of a central carpet, 4-8m long by 2m wide, and two side rugs, the same length as the central carpet and 1m wide (sometimes called kenare – edge rugs), head and bottom pieces were sometimes added.

The white-grey coloured wool of the Karabakh breed of sheep was very important in the development of the region’s carpet weaving. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, sheep farming in Karabakh leaped ahead of other regions. Naturally, the dyeing skills of local weavers contributed much to carpet quality. There is information that a whole hamlet in Karabakh was engaged in the dyeing craft. People went there from every quarter to dye their thread. In former times there was a dye-house in Jabrail district called chay yatagi (river-bed), in the Mammad bey kahriz (kahriz – underground water-supply).

Dyers had to have sharp eyes and be able to distinguish colours clearly. They had to know how to get the desired colour from plants and trees. The colours had to be permanent.