Weaving in the Economic and Cultural Life of the Armenian Colonies of Ukraine: Historical Discourse

Since ancient times, weaving was one of the most important types of folk crafts and a significant component of the economic life on Ukrainian terrains. Different fabric products – rugs, clothes, belts, bedspreads, capes, and scarves – were widely used in everyday life, for the decoration of housing, as luxury goods, and as a monetary equivalent for sales and exchanges. So the relevance of this study is to highlight the role of the Armenians in the development of weaving production on Ukrainian terrains, in the formation of a trading network of various woven goods, as well as to reveal their role in shaping a special style of life and tastes of different layers of the population, the consumption culture of this kind of objects. Weaving played an important role both in the internal life of the Armenian colonies and in the external ties of the Armenians with the Polish-Ukrainian environment. Comprehensive scientific research of the historical development of Armenian weaving on the lands of Ukraine, with account of all the components of this process – silkworm, carpet weaving, the trade aspect of weaving, etc., are absent today. It is important that, as in the case of jewelry and arms manufacture, the role of Armenians in the weaving industry was also dual: they imported all types of woven products, including carpets, into Ukraine, and they were also manufacturers of various woven products not only in the Ukrainian lands but also in the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire. The intensive development of silk weaving on Ukrainian terrains, the production of goods out of local silk and carpet-manufacturing are apparently also associated with the Armenians. Although most researchers associate the development of persiarnias in Ukraine with Stanislaw’s workshops of Misiorowych and Madzharskyi in the middle of the 18th c., the facts show that the vigorous growth of the persiarnias (the Armenian weaving workshops) began in the 17th c.