The Hands Behind Every Rug: A Day in an Ararat Weaving Workshop
A rug may begin with a design, but it comes to life through people: the weavers, dyers, designers and finishers whose knowledge is carried from one pair of hands to another.
By Hakan Karar · Ararat Rugs
When we look at a finished rug, our eyes naturally go first to its colours, its drawing and the movement of its pattern. Yet the most important part of the work is almost invisible: the accumulated knowledge of the people who made it.
Every knot has passed through a weaver’s fingers. Every line depends upon her attention. Every colour has been selected, prepared and placed with purpose. Long before a rug reaches a home in Tokyo, Istanbul, New York or elsewhere in the world, it has already lived for months in the workshop—growing slowly, row by row, through a shared discipline of hand, eye and memory.
This is the human landscape behind Ararat Rugs.
A Story from Ararat to Istanbul—and Tokyo
Our story began in Eastern Anatolia, in the country surrounding Mount Ararat, where rugs and kilims belonged naturally to everyday life. They were not separated from the rhythms of the household or the landscape. Wool, colour, weaving and use were parts of one continuous culture.
In the early 1970s, my father, Eyüp Karar, opened the family’s first rug shop in Istanbul’s historic Sultanahmet district. During his doctoral studies at Bochum University in Germany, he had encountered a different way of looking at the textiles with which he had grown up. Objects that had been familiar parts of daily life in Anatolia were understood abroad as works of art. That realization helped begin Ararat’s journey from Ağrı to Istanbul and, eventually, to the wider world.
Our relationship with Japan added another important chapter. We opened our Japanese website in 2001 and established Ararat International in Tokyo in 2003. Living and working in Japan changed the way I understood our responsibility. Japan has shown that an old craft does not need to remain fixed in the past. A tradition can preserve its techniques and cultural memory while continuing to respond to the present.
“For us, preserving rug weaving does not mean reproducing the past mechanically. It means keeping its knowledge alive, and giving that knowledge a future.”
After many of the natural-rug producers with whom we had worked ceased production, we decided that merely selling rugs was no longer enough. We gathered experienced weavers and masters, knowledge of natural dyeing, traditional materials and weaving equipment, and began coordinating production from our centre in Malatya. More than fifty years of experience, our design archives and the possibilities of contemporary technology now support the work taking place at the loom.
Before the First Knot
A day in the atelier begins before any knot is tied. The warp must be correctly prepared and evenly tensioned. The full-scale design must be placed where it can be read clearly. The wool is arranged by colour and checked against the pattern. These quiet preparations determine the accuracy, strength and rhythm of everything that follows.
Preparing and checking the warp. Precision at this stage becomes the structure of the finished rug.
In our Malatya design studio, a rug may begin with the study of an antique carpet, a museum work, a historical drawing or an original contemporary idea. Designs are first developed with the knowledge of traditional composition, then translated into full-scale working patterns with defined colours and knot counts. Technology helps us communicate the design precisely, but it does not replace the weaver. It gives her a clear map; only her hands can turn that map into a textile.
This distinction is central to Ararat Rugs. When we study historical carpets, our purpose is not to make lifeless replicas. We study their structure, balance, wool, colour relationships and visual language. From those principles, we create an Ararat interpretation—faithful to the intelligence of the original tradition, yet made for life today.
Colour Waiting Above the Loom
Bundles of wool hang above the working area: madder reds, indigo blues, softened greens, earth colours, yellows and undyed natural shades. Their slight variations are not defects to be corrected. They are evidence of natural materials and hand preparation, and they give the finished field a depth that a completely uniform industrial colour cannot reproduce.
We choose high-quality wool for resilience, texture and the way it receives colour. Much of our work uses hand-spun wool and natural dyes prepared from time-honoured sources such as madder root, indigo, walnut husk, pomegranate and other plants. Correct preparation and mordanting are as important as the dye source itself. The aim is not simply to create an attractive colour on the day it is woven, but a colour capable of developing character through years of light and use.
The yarn hanging above a loom is therefore more than raw material. It is a palette prepared for architecture in wool.
Knowledge Held in the Hands
The work proceeds one small decision at a time. A length of wool is selected. A knot is formed around the warp. The yarn is cut. After a row is completed, the weft is passed and compacted. Then the sequence begins again.
From a distance, this repetition may appear simple. In practice, it requires concentration, coordination and physical memory. The weaver must follow the drawing while also feeling the tension of the structure. She must recognize where one colour ends and another begins, maintain the intended knot density, and see not only the row in front of her but the larger pattern gradually emerging above it.
When several weavers work side by side on a large carpet, the task becomes collective. Their pace must remain balanced across the width of the loom. The carpet is not assembled from separate pieces: it grows as one continuous work. For our oversized and custom projects, this can mean many months of shared attention. Some one-piece Ararat carpets exceed 100 square metres, requiring specially prepared looms, carefully organized space and patient coordination from beginning to end.
Human variation remains within this precision. A handmade rug is disciplined, but it is not mechanical. Its life comes from the meeting of structure and touch—the barely perceptible differences created as many thousands of individual knots become one surface.
The Workshop as a Living School
A weaving atelier is a place of production, but it is also a place where knowledge is transmitted. Much of what matters cannot be preserved in a diagram alone. It is learned by sitting at the loom, watching an experienced hand, correcting tension, recognizing wool and colour, and repeating a technique until it becomes instinctive.
For this reason, the future of rug weaving depends upon more than preserving old carpets in collections. Those carpets are essential teachers, but the living tradition also requires working looms, experienced masters and younger people who have the opportunity to learn.
The number of ateliers and skilled weavers in Anatolia has declined over time. The 2023 earthquakes in southeastern Anatolia placed further pressure on communities where this knowledge survives. Beginning in 2024, we made the establishment of new workshops and the encouragement and training of new weavers an explicit part of our mission. Our continuing initiative, Our Weaving Workshops Are Expanding, is therefore not simply a plan to produce more rugs. It is an effort to protect the human chain that makes authentic weaving possible.
Growth, to us, must remain measured. The purpose is not anonymous volume. It is to create stable, dignified work; to keep experienced weaving artists active; to support registered employment and social security; and to make space for knowledge to pass to another generation. A tradition cannot be protected while the people who carry it are forgotten.
“A workshop is not only where a rug is made. It is where a culture is given the conditions to continue.”
Responsibility After the Loom
When the final row is completed, the rug leaves the loom—but it is not yet finished. The pile must be examined and carefully levelled. The surface is cleaned, washed and stretched. Edges and fringes are checked. Small irregularities are attended to by hand, and the colours and drawing are inspected across the whole composition.
I believe it is important to remain physically close to this process. A rug should not become an abstract product moving through a system. It should remain a work we know: who wove it, which design it follows, which materials were used, how it developed, and what was required to bring it to completion. Our production records and digital tracking help us preserve this information, but personal inspection remains indispensable.
Finishing is also a moment of recognition. For months, the weavers have viewed the carpet only partially, with much of the completed work rolled around the loom. Once it is opened and seen as a whole, thousands of separate acts become a single image.
What a Handmade Rug Carries
Our rugs travel far from the ateliers in which they are woven. Yet we want them to carry something of those places with them: the intelligence of the design, the character of natural wool and colour, the patience of the loom, and the dignity of the people whose hands made the work possible.
A handmade rug is often described by its size, origin, knot density or age. These details matter, but they do not fully explain its value. Its deeper value lies in continuity. It connects sheep and plant, designer and dyer, weaver and finisher, workshop and home. It brings a long cultural memory into daily life.
Our journey—from the landscape of Ararat to Istanbul, from Istanbul to Tokyo, and from our research and archives back to the weaving regions—has taught us that tradition survives only when it remains meaningful in the present. We do not want the handmade rug to become merely an object remembered from another time. We want it to continue being made, used, studied and loved.
Behind every Ararat rug are many hands.
Behind those hands is a living inheritance.
And in every finished rug, that inheritance begins another journey.
Continue the story: The Story of Ararat · Message from the President · Our Weaving Workshops Are Expanding