Caucasian carpets come from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The weavers of these mountainous regions enjoyed a solid reputation, and it was not without reason that Shah Abbas (16th century) forced 27.000 Armenian families to settle south of his capital Isfahan to work in the imperial workshops and produce the most prestigious carpets that history has ever bequeathed to us.

The Caucasian tradition, however, is not the result of meticulous, sophisticated work, producing designs that have been worked over to the extreme.
They are the expression of a popular idiom that elevates its folklore to the heights of art. The weavers of the Caucasus have always worked in the purest village tradition, on rudimentary looms in their farms and homes. This spontaneous, discontinuous, and intuitive work left the designs and colours completely free. Everyone in the household put their own lent a personal touch to the work.
But the revolution of 1917 and the establishment of Soviet regimes in the three Caucasus republics were to have negative repercussions.
The systematisation of working methods (pre-established drawings on millimetre paper, control and homogenisation of materials, strict timetables, etc.) and centralisation in workshops meant that those who had preserved tradition through their individualism and personality now tended to work in teams.
The accents of truth and spontaneous impulses had to give way to the rigid precepts of planning and profit. As the years went by, the work became stiff, even if it was technically impeccable (or even improved), but its essence was drained from it, and the craft lost its identity, producing nothing more than a pale copy of its past.
The Caucasian carpets of the 19th century are the last witnesses to an era that is gone forever, and to an identity that has been irretrievably alienated.