Rolled, stitched, weaved - Baku's carpet museum

Few buildings in the world announce their contents with the subtlety of a sledgehammer quite like the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum in Baku.

Designed by Austrian(!) architect Franz Janz, the building is literally shaped like an enormous, partially rolled-up carpet.
It feels delightfully kitsch from the outside, is slightly disorienting on the inside with it's sloping floors but beneath it all, it's a museum doing some heavy cultural and geopolitical lifting

The museum is certainly not endless rows of dusty rugs, more a place showcasing that there is more to carpets than just floor coverings.
It offers an interesting glimpse into the ancient craft of weaving, spinning, and dyeing, with exhibits that show how raw wool is transformed into richly patterned carpets. It’s an introduction to the artistry behind Azerbaijan’s most famous cultural symbol.

We were especially fascinated by the various everyday life woven items from table cloths, headcaps for men, travel chests to walls for yurts and decorations for pack animals.

However, the most interesting, and somewhat revealing aspect of the museum isn’t just how the rugs are woven, but how the map is drawn.

The collection divides Caucasian carpet weaving into distinct regional "schools", e.g. Baku or Karabakh group. Among them, there are exhibits dedicated to traditions that spill casually across today's fortified borders, e.g. the Gazakh 'school'.
While Gazakh is a district in northwest Azerbaijan, the historical weaving cluster includes valleys in Armenia and eastern Georgia or as the museums information board puts it 'historically Azerbaijan land currently belonging to the territory of Armenia / Georgia'. Also, an entire section of the museum is devoted to the legendary Tabriz school of weaving, despite Tabriz residing in northwestern Iran, i.e. in the museum’s categorisation, modern political borders just dissolve.

Where a Westerner might describe these pieces under the umbrella of cross- cultural nomadic weaving, the curators of the museum frame them cleanly through an Azerbaijani national lens and the labels offer zero nod to the contested history and territories of the area. Everything is claimed under one unbroken thread of state identity.

In summary, an interesting insight in Azerbaijani applied art and certainly worth an hour or two escaping the sun outside.Read more