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Woodcarving
"Let the pillar of your home be firm"
The art of woodcarvers greatly enlivened traditional homes in Armenia, which contained many wooden components, from cupola-shaped ceilings and pillars to functional furniture, bins, chests, cradles, ladles, and spoons. Although pillars were usually not engraved, the capitals were often decorated. Among the four or more pillars, one was accentuated as the "mother column," which could be differentiated from the rest primarily by the abundance of hanging amulets and different rituals performed at or around it. This main pillar supported the house, much like (in traditional lore) the master of the home.
Woodcarvers also decorated utensils, especially those responsible for sustaining life, such as grain bins or cradles. The purposes of the decorations were not only aesthetic, but also to protect their contents from the evil eye. Woodcarvers created special amulets, known as daghdaghan, for this purpose. Today the daghdaghan serve as both home decoration and personal adornment.
As woodworking became more industrialized in the twentieth century, the craft of woodcarving faded, surviving mainly in functional and unpretentious ladles. In Soviet times, woodcarvers sometimes added Soviet symbols to the traditional wooden utensils. In the 1970s, however, a new life for woodcarving emerged, thanks in part to its revival through museums, which encouraged and commissioned new works. Gradually woodcarving returned from museums to homes. In the early 1990s, during the first unstable years of independence, a new stage of revival emerged, as many amateur woodcarvers made their hobby a profession for earning a living. |