The story of Fables and Folktales

Fables and Folktales collection has been a massive project to work on, a real labour of love, hard work and great fun. We collaborated with two wonderful artists: graphic designer Mari Dass and artist Lilit Zebli-Avayan. Working with Mari and Lilit has been an absolute joy, a perfect team for a creative project.

The inspiration for the artwork has come from many sources. First and foremost, a magical world of boundless collections: Armenian Folk Tales. We draw inspiration from their deep wisdom, strong values and pure magic. A vision to create wallpaper that encourages imagination, joy and even daydreaming. We want it to add drama and opulence to the space, but with a modern fun twist.

Our second source of inspiration is the ornamental art of the miniature figures, which adorn the pages of thousands of ancient manuscripts, and stone carvings from Armenian churches. Many of these manuscripts can be seen in the Matenadaran, the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts in Yerevan.

We had so much fun drawing and redrawing the animals and the birds, giving them characters and sometimes funny names and stories, which helped us bring them to life. Look at the development of this little character…

We had many styles in mind for the final look. Some are still works in progress. Our current version is a multicoloured mural inspired by the colouring and style of Mexican embroideries, which have been in vogue recently on the interior design scene.

This wall mural has hundreds of hand drawn elements to create the impression of a dynamic mural. At the centre of it all is our beloved character “Hazaran Blbul”, the queen of all Armenian folk tales, with its magical story, layers of wisdom and ancient knowledge containing sufficient depth to make it worthy of years of study.

We had so much fun creating the foliage and flowers for this mural. There is an element of romance about redrawing something that has been drawn by someone hundreds of years ago. You cannot but think about the person who originally drew it - what were they thinking? Where were they sitting? What was their life like? And so many other questions. This is a process that connects us to our heritage. This is how we look to the past to create the future.