Famous in the Bible as the final resting place of Noah’s Ark, Mount Ararat has been wreathed in legends for millennia. Its two peaks, Great Ararat (Büyük Ağrı, 5137 meters/16,854 feet) and Little Ararat (Küçük Ağrı,3895 meters/12,779 feet), were revered by the people of ancient Urartu (13th to 7th centuries BC), who gave their name (Urartu = Ararat) to the mountain.
The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2000 BC) describes a great flood, as does the later record of Berossus (3rd century BC), and course the Bible (Genesis and Gospels) and the Qur'an.
In the story, a flood lasting 40 days and nights wipes out all living things except those in a boat or ark built, on orders of God, to survive The Deluge. In the ark are male and female representatives of each species, including Noah, his wife, and his family.
By staying loyal to all these values, oriental carpets were moved to Istanbul 50 years ago by Mr. Eyüp Karar, who is a native of the region.
Photo: Mount Ararat and sheep. (Ararat Studios)
Photo: Our first store in Istanbul Sultanahmet.
Photo: Historical Sultanahmet square (Ararat Studios)Mr. Eyüp Karar went to Germany for his PhD work at Bochum University. He realized that the rugs and kilims he surrounded in his childhood were an art for Westerners, but it was just daily using materials for him. With this mindset and realization, returning from Germany, he opened his first shop in the Sultan Ahmet region, known as the old city of Istanbul, in the early 1970s. Thus, the oriental carpet adventure that opened from Ağrı to Istanbul and from there to the whole world started.
In the first years, it appealed to tourists who visited Turkey and were interested in carpets. In the following years, we reached the market in Europe and America. In 1998, we opened an English website; in 2001, we also opened a Japanese one. After that, in October 2003, we established Ararat International Co., Ltd. in Aoyama, near Omotesando, Tokyo, to provide better services to our customers from Japan.
Ararat International protects all values from the past to the present. It creates value concerning people, the environment, and art. Ararat promises that you will read it once, implement it, and share it with the world. We enable our customers to visit and experience this whole world.
After being the carpets reseller of the companies that produced naturally for many years, as these companies stopped their activities, we decided to take over their production. As a result, we brought together all the qualified weavers and their know-how of natural dyeing, materials, and weaving equipment. We took over the flag of natural carpet production and added the technology and our experience of more than 40 years.
Currently, we have chosen Malatya as the headquarters, which is placed in the industrial zone of Malatya, and with our experienced team, we manage all weaving regions from this center. We have 25 workshops in different cities and between 10 and 20 weaving looms in each workshop. Until now, companies that produce natural carpets have focused on wholesale and have not made retail sales to the end customers. Due to our previous retail experience, we are changing their wholesale approach and delivering lower quantity but higher quality products to our end users without worrying about wholesale. We do not avoid any cost and use expensive natural dyes in our collection carpets with peace of mind. For this, we aim to promote our work and bring the products together with more special homes through our Istanbul and Tokyo showrooms and global online sales channels.
We see that rugs and carpets have become a part of our daily life. We keep the old tradition alive and are excited about it. We create handwoven, authentic, natural, traditional, and modern carpets for you that will add value to you every day.
You won't believe it when you see it, and it's a great feeling. All the carpets you see here are produced with 100% natural materials and old methods. We are shearing the sheep, washing their wool, spinning and dyeing them with various natural plants & roots to obtain unique colors. Then, unique motifs were immortalized on weaving looms in the high villages of Mesopotamia after months of labor. There is more, and we are determined to preserve all these values. We owe being good and being preferred in this business to this.
Photo: Ararat Rugs Weaving Workshops
Photo: A View From Our Tokyo Showroom
