Welcome! You have come to the website of HAYKO, one of the top authorities on fine rugs & tapestries in the world. His workshop and showroom at 857 Lexington Avenue (at 65th Street) in New York City contains some of the finest examples of the ancient art of weaving to be found anywhere, in all price ranges from museum quality pieces worth hundreds of thousands, to lovely one-of-a-kind rugs for as little as a few hundred dollars...
You can
learn a lot just by having an informal chat with Hayk Oltaci. You may be surprised to learn that despite his friendly, welcoming and low-key manner, Hayko, as he likes to be called, is among the foremost experts of fine rugs and tapestries in the world.
"Hayko is such a nice guy, it's really hard to realize sometimes that he's a world authority," says one of his long-time clients.
Anyone who has ever visited the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul - that maze of a tent city overflowing with all the riches of the Orient, including finely wrought copper, brass, silks, and of course oriental rugs - will feel right at home in Hayko's cosy atelier.
Up a narrow staircase, through the door, and suddenly you are surrounded not only by an abundance of rugs hanging on all the walls from floor to ceiling; you'll find yourself enveloped in that wonderful aroma of natural wool yarns, a delicious scent that makes you feel almost as if you've been transported to the heart of the ancient section of Istanbul.
The space is divided into two parts of equal size. Toward the front are rugs of all kinds and shapes and sizes, hanging, rolled up, leaning against the walls, and piled on one another.
The back half of the space is a large, pleasant workroom where the skilled weavers are hard at work doing their invisible magic restoring one rug for a museum and another for an American family whose name is a household word.
One of the artisans is a woman of middle age from Tibet, with a warm smile and a few words of English. Nearby are a stunningly beautiful young woman from Afghanistan, and her Armenian friend. Everyone looks up and smiles. Hayko slips easily into their language and back into English, then speaks in French on the telephone, and answers a question in English for a visitor.
When you are here, you feel almost as if you've been away on a wonderful journey, and going back outside into the hustle and bustle of Lexington Avenue and 65th Street is almost a bit of a shock.
~ Be sure to check out our rug weaving classes. ~
