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As a structural engineer, George Aposhian Jr. helped design buildings. As a rugmaker, he knots ornate wool carpets. Guess which project takes more time.
"It doesn't take as long to build a skyscraper as it does to make a carpet," says the Holladay man, whose first carpet took him nine years to finish. "It takes a lot of patience."
That patience will be on display this afternoon at the 21st annual Living Traditions Festival, where Aposhian and his daughter Diane will demonstrate the time-honored and time-consuming art of Armenian rug-weaving. It's a skill Aposhian learned from his father, who learned it from his father.
The carpets are beautiful and functional, but to Aposhian they are more than that - they are physical links to his Armenian heritage. The first rug he made was based on a decorative pattern passed down by his grandfather, who immigrated to Utah in 1909. Without his carpets, the man may not have completed the journey.
The story, and it's a good one, goes like this: Zadik Moses Aposhian was a successful rug merchant in Turkey in 1898 when two LDS missionaries gave him a copy of The Book of Mormon. He read the book in three days, felt divinely inspired and, along with his wife, Catherine, converted to Mormonism three weeks later.
But the Aposhians' new religion did not sit well with the other Turks in their village, who shunned them and stopped buying Zadik's rugs. After a decade of persecution, the Aposhians decided to flee with their seven children to Utah. It was an arduous journey that took them from Turkey to Lebanon, to Egypt, to France and then to England. Along the way they were robbed twice.
Their odyssey stalled in Liverpool, where Zadik was forced to work as a laborer to support his family. To fund their trans-Atlantic crossing, Zadik sold his two remaining carpets, which had been hidden from thieves at the bottom of his trunk. But when it came time to depart, their three oldest children accidentally boarded the wrong ship. By the time their parents realized the mistake, the ship had sailed.
The remaining six Aposhians traveled by boat to Montreal, and then by train to Salt Lake City. On the train they bought several oranges from a man who took Zadik's last $20 and promised to return with the change. He never came back. When the family finally arrived in Utah, they were penniless. The couple finally got some good news when their three oldest children were located in Mexico and reunited with them in Salt Lake City.
In Utah, Zadik Aposhian found work in a silver mine and later in a brick factory. He never sold his carpets again. But he continued to make rugs for his family's use, and passed along his skills to a son, George Sr. George owned an automobile-repair shop but made a few rugs in his spare time and eventually built a loom for his son, George Jr.
The elder George manned an Armenian rug-weaving booth at the first Living Traditions festival in 1986 before turning it over to his son several years later. An Aposhian has shown the family's handsome rugs at the festival ever since.
"It's about preserving the family tradition," says George Aposhian Jr., 78, who thinks of his late grandfather every time he works on a rug. "He was a man who made his living making carpets. I couldn't see not carrying it on."
Like most Oriental rugs, an Aposhian carpet represents countless hours spent meticulously knotting thousands of colored wool threads into a pattern stretched vertically on a hand-made wooden loom. Completing a horizontal row of knots takes about an hour, and each carpet has hundreds of rows.
"People will watch me . . . and say, 'How can you stand to do that?' " says Aposhian, who works on a loom in his living room. "It's fun to watch the pattern grow. But the real satisfaction is cutting [the finished carpet] off the loom and putting it on the floor."
Aposhian made looms for each of his four children. But only one, Diane Moffat, has kept the family tradition going. Moffat began weaving on her own about 10 years ago, thanks largely to years spent assisting her father at Living Traditions.
"I doubt I would have ever started if it wasn't for the festival," says the Salt Lake City woman, who likes rug-weaving because she feels connected to her Armenian ancestors. "Your fingers are doing the same thing that their fingers were doing . . . back in history as carpetmakers."
Moffat and her father hope to give people a deeper appreciation for the artistry and hard work that go into crafting a carpet. In an age when machines can crank out a credible-looking Oriental rug in a few hours, the Aposhians also hope to keep their family's heritage alive.
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Contact Brandon Griggs at griggs@sltrib.com or 801-257-8689. Send comments to livingeditor@sltrib.com.
Dream weavers
George Aposhian Jr. and his daughter, Diane Moffat, will demonstrate the art of Armenian rugweaving from noon to 7 p.m. today in Canopy C on the grounds of the City-County Building, 450 S. 200 East, Salt Lake City. The crafts demonstrations are part of the 21st annual Living Traditions festival, which celebrates Utah's ethnic diversity with food, crafts and live music. Festival hours today are noon to 7 p.m. Admission is free.